use the battle began over the rookery and
afterwards the aggressor sailed away to where some rooks were feeding.
Nor would a crow have exhibited such agility of wing. Swallows often
buffet a crow; but this was a clear case of a rook attacking.

In the country rooks never perch on houses, and but seldom on sheds,
unless fresh thatched, when they come to examine the straw, as also on
the ricks. But in Brighton, which is a treeless locality, a rook may
sometimes be seen on a chimney-pot in the midst of the town, and the
pinnacles of the Pavilion are a favourite resort; a whole flock of
rooks and jackdaws often wheel about the domes of that building. At
the Chace a rook occasionally mounted on a molehill recently thrown up
and scattered the earth right and left with his bill--striking now to
one side and now to the other. Hilary admitted that rooks destroyed
vast quantities of grubs and creeping things, but was equally positive
that they feasted on grain; and indeed it could not be denied that a
crop of wheat almost ripe is a very favourite resort of a flock. He
had seen rooks carry away ears of wheat detached from the stalk to an
open spot for better convenience. They would follow the dibbling
machine, taking each grain of seed-wheat in succession, guided to the
exact spot by the slight depression made by the dibble.

Every evening all the rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vast
flocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winter
afternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for a
length of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to the
Chace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm a mile from
the roosting-place. This the oldest labourer had never known them do
before. In the winter just past (1879-80) there were several very
thick fogs during sharp frost. One afternoon I noticed a small flock
of starlings which seemed unable to find their way home to the copse
where I knew vast numbers of them roosted. This flock as it grew dusk
settled in an elm by the roadside, then removed to another, shaking
down the rime from the branches, and a third time wheeled round and
perched in an oak. At that hour on ordinary days the starlings would
all have been flying fast in a straight line for the copse, but these
were evidently in doubt and did not know which direction to take.

Hilary disliked to see the wood-pigeons in his wheat-fields: the
wood-pigeon beats the grains out