Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/90

 82 their “croak,” which in the solitude of the glen came down upon us like a challenge or warning. As they wheeled and curved above, we thought of an enslaved brother of theirs we had often seen sitting with a clipped wing on a beer barrel in a brewery yard, that spoke provincial English, and cleverly imitated a bugle call.

We spent some hours in the neighbourhood of the corry, anxious for a sight of the falcon, but were disappointed. But the friend who instructed us where to go, has seen falcons in the corry, or near it, repeatedly.

The hooded crow is seldom seen, but the carrion crow and magpie are common over all the district; but they are so much trapped and shot by keepers that they are not very numerous. The seeing of a magpie, or “pyet,” is considered an omen in Scotland, and there is a well-known rhyme descriptive of it:

Ane’s joy,

Twa’s grief,

Three’s a weddin’,

Four’s death.

The rook or corn crow was perhaps never so plentiful as it now is in the Borders. Some thirty or forty years ago, many proprietors had them destroyed or driven from their rookeries, from an impression that they greatly injured the grain crops. This was a mistake that soon became evident, and the birds were again taken into favour; and on many estates, rookeries have for a number of years past been protected as a part of the picturesque. The birds have nearly doubled their number within the last twenty years in some localities; but in very few instances have they been known to nest in the woods from which they or their parents had been previously driven away.

Rooks have made a considerable change in their food within the last twenty years; and we are of opinion that they may have been driven by necessity to this, owing to a large increase in their number and a decrease in field-grubs, caused by the grub-killing manures now so much used by farmers. And from the diet they now seem fondest of, some even think they may have crossed their species with the carrion crow; an improbable idea: and besides, no outward change in bill or body is discernible in the rook, and the carrion crows still live in isolated pairs as hitherto.

That they have made a considerable change in their diet, in Border localities at least, is indisputable; and although their young are eaten in towns and villages, few country people will partake of them, simply because they know how rank much of the food is upon which they feed. They revel over the rankest quarry, whatever the fallen animal; and when a sheep falls on the hills, they have its eyes pecked almost as soon as it ceases to struggle, and should it be the nesting season, the entrails immediately follow. This we have personally witnessed.

Talking with an upland farmer of our acquaintance, we asked him if lambs were ever attacked or disturbed by the birds of prey frequenting the hills. He said he could not say they were, but that the common crows sometimes attacked sickly and weakly lambs, and that when they did so they invariably made their attack on the navel—the tenderest and most assailable part of the animal.

They are also, as gamekeepers know, exceedingly destructive in the nesting season, for they can hunt up the nests of pheasants and partridges as cleverly as boys, and when found the eggs are immediately gobbled. They also in dry seasons, when slugs and worms are scarce, occasionally carry off the young of these birds. In 1859 the spring and early summer were dry, and in that year we knew a preserve from which thirteen live pheasants were carried off by them, and a larger number of partridges. The keeper, in the presence of two people we know, shot several of the rooks when flying off with the young in their beaks. The young were of course very small at the time they were carried away, but were feathered to some extent.

Many years ago, jackdaws in these counties lived almost solely in ruins and openings of precipices, but now they in great numbers nest and rear their young in rookeries.

Only one instance is recorded of a jackdaw having reared its young in an open nest like a rook, and it is in Meyer’s work; wherein it is stated that a gentleman came upon a young bird at the foot of a tree, on which there was a nest, round which a jackdaw was fluttering, apparently concerned about the fallen bird. But this we do not consider positive proof, as no inspection of the nest or remaining young was made. We are able positively to state, however, that some jackdaws have for a number of years built and reared their young in open nests in a Roxburghshire rookery we know; and we have at present eggs and a young bird before us, which we this season abstracted personally from one of these nests. The trees on which the daws build in the rookery we refer to, are spruce firs of pretty full foliage, and this shows the birds’ natural desire for seclusion. One nest only is built on each tree, and it is deeper and more shapely and solid than the rook’s; and a deepish, cosy mixture of wool, horse-tail hair, and moss, forms the interior, the exterior being compactly formed of sticks and moss. In rookeries, as elsewhere, daws also avail themselves for nesting purposes of all suitable tree-holes. They also occasionally build open nests among the ivy clinging to trees. In White’s “Selborne” it is noted that jackdaws have been known to build in rabbit-burrows. We also know some burrows in a rocky bank in which these birds nest regularly.

There are two likely causes why the jackdaws may have become citizens with the rooks. First, the ruined keeps, towers, abbeys, and creviced precipices in which they so long have lived are all, and have been for years, fully inhabited, and as they live to a good old age—till they, in fact, literally grow grey-headed—and have large families every spring, a want of house-room necessitates the young to provide homes for themselves, hence the emigration to “foreign parts.” Next, daws are birds that are strongly attached to