The rook is common throughout the British Islands, and is our best-known large land bird, being everywhere the most abundant species, as well as the most conspicuous, owing to his great size, blackness, gregariousness, and habits of perching and nesting on the tops of trees, and of feeding on open grass spaces, where it is visible at a long distance. Without being a favourite of either the gamekeeper or the farmer, he is, in a measure, a protected species, the rookery being looked on as a pleasant and almost indispensable appanage of the country-house. It was not always so. In former times the rook was regarded as a highly injurious bird, and in the reign of Henry VIII. an Act of Parliament was passed to ensure its destruction. But this is ancient history. The existing sentiment, which is so favourable to the bird, probably had its origin centuries back in time, and the rook has everywhere come to regard the trees that are near a human habitation as the safest to build on. It is surprising to find how fearless of man he is in this respect, while retaining a suspicious habit towards him when at a distance from home. I recall one rookery on a clump of fir-trees so close to a large house that, from the top windows, one can look down on the nests and count the eggs in many of them; yet for miles round the area is a well-wooded park, where the birds might easily have found scores of sites as well or better suited to their requirements. [Illustration: FIG. 56.--ROOKS AND NEST.]