Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/260

182 "ty-yack" of the young, are always associated in our mind with those glorious nights when the September moon is at its full. On all sides birds make themselves heard after the silence of the moult. "Yip, yip, yip," squeals a Kestrel, treading air in his usual easy style. At the spot from which he rose hurriedly, we find a lizard's tail still squirming. There is the silvertoned twitter of a "charm" of Goldfinches at the thistle-heads, and, above all, there is the cheerful uproar of the Rooks once more. One must live with a rookery close at hand to understand the manifold activities of the sable folk, all voiced in modulations of a pliant tongue. At present their clamour expresses satisfaction at the improved supply of worms and grubs, due to the falling of the first autumn rains upon the sun-burnt pastures. But there is also the torrent of cawing which the whole flock, with sudden downward swoop, hurls at the head of a fox or other enemy discovered sneaking to cover, and the deafening outburst of comment or condemnation which follows a sudden silence at the conclusion of one of those mysterious conferences known as "crows' courts."

We incline to connect the noisy exuberance of the rooks with the great emergence of Tipulæ, popularly craneflies or "daddy longlegs," which takes place about the third week of September. When full grown the grubs, known as "leather jackets," come to the surface of the ground and place themselves upright in