Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/47

Rh particular I recollect seeing five or six, and these flew in a moth-like fashion out upon the heath and back again to the fir-trees, keeping in a body, and often uttering a short sharp chirp or whistle, something after the fashion of the Nightjar. I laid quietly behind a bank and watched their movements, and as their excursions were made in a westerly direction—between myself and the fast-retiring sun—I could see them very plainly skimming about, sometimes just over the heather, then settling down, or chasing each other as if in play, after which they would return to the wood and settle on some low fir branch near to me, so that I could almost reach them with my hand. It seemed to me that they were birds belonging to the same nest, as they appeared uncommonly tame, but I had not heard that any Owl had nested in the wood where these frequented. Strange to say I have seen the Shorteared Owl but twice in this neighbourhood, while the longeared species is much oftener observed. It may often be seen during the winter months gibbeted in the "gamekeepers' museum," for it must be understood that here, as in most other places, all Owls are classed as "vermin," and pay the penalty accordingly.—

—Whilst spending a few weeks in West Sussex during the past autumn, I was much amused in watching the way in which the Rooks carried off the acorns from an oak in front of our windows. Not content with picking up those which had fallen upon the grass below, they alighted upon the extremity of the branches, and plucking off the growing ones, carried them away to a little distance, and attacked them at leisure. I remarked that they did not swallow them whole, as Wood Pigeons do, but pecked them to pieces on the ground. Whether they swallowed the fragments, or only broke them to get at a grub within, I could not ascertain without shooting some of them, which I was loth to do; but I am inclined to think that a worm was the attraction, for after the birds had decamped I picked up handfuls of damaged and broken acorns, many of them only slightly chipped, which I should hardly have found if the birds had been feeding on them. This habit does not seem to have been noticed by the authorities on British birds, and I have looked in vain for any mention of it in the pages of Bewick, Montagu, Selby, Macgillivray, and Yarrell. It is true that Macgillivray includes acorns amongst the food of the Rook, but mentions them in such a way as rather to suggest that it is the fallen acorns which are picked up. In Jesse's 'Gleanings,' however (1st series, p. 61), I find the following statement:—"Rooks are known to bury acorns, and I believe walnuts also, as I have observed them taking ripe walnuts from a tree and returning to it before they could have had time to break them and eat the contents. Indeed, when we consider how hard the shell of a walnut is, it is not easy to guess how the Rook contrives to break it. May they not, by first burying them, soften the shell, and afterwards return to feed upon them?" It is a little curious that