Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/407

Rh That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, sometimes feed on insects I have little doubt, and I think I have observed the common buzzard, falco buteo, to settle on the ground and pick up insects of some kind or other.—.

ROOKS.

Rooks are continually fighting, and pulling each other's nests to pieces: these proceedings are inconsistent with living in such close community. And yet if a pair offer to build on a single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at once. Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twigs which the rooks drop in building supply the poor with brushwood to light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to finish any nest till the rest have completed their building. As soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and demolishes the whole. As soon as rooks have finished their nests, and before they lay, the cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a fondling tremulous voice and fluttering wings, and all the little blandishments that are expressed by the young, while in a helpless state. This gallant deportment of the males is continued through the whole season of incubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their nests, but on the ground in the open fields.—. After the first brood of rooks is sufficiently fledged, they all leave their nest trees in the day-time, and resort to some distant place in search of food, but return regularly every evening, in vast flights, to their nest trees, where, after flying round several times with much noise and clamour till they are all assembled together, they take up their abode for the night.—.

Thrushes during long droughts are of great service in hunting out shell snails, which they pull to pieces for their young, and are thereby very serviceable in gardens. Missel thrushes do not