The rooks seemed, to quote a boyish expression, "to build fair," quite different from the mischievous jackdaws, "who will allus rather thieve than work," as an old keeper once said to me. It is curious how rooks change their food during the different months of the year. They feed their young almost entirely on animal food till they leave the nest. As a rule, they give the young rooks, grubs, worms and cockchafers; but during the very dry summers that closed the nineteenth century, being short of insect food, the old birds took to robbing hen-coops, and fell also upon young pheasants and partridges in the grass. Several keepers have told me that they were obliged to destroy whole rookeries on this account, for when a rook once takes to chickens or pheasants, like a man-eating tiger, he will never return to humbler diet. It is wonderful how tenacious rooks are, of returning year after year to the same place, and how difficult it is for any one to start a new colony. Nests may be put up, and young birds partially tamed, but it is a hard matter, as a gardener once said to me, "to 'tice the rooks against their will; 'tis like callin' the wild geese, unless they wish to hear." [Sidenote: ROOKS LEAVE FOR A DEATH] In the South there is a strong belief that when the rooks abandon a rookery some misfortune will happen to the owner. At Chilton Candover it is said, there was much excitement because the rooks in Lady Ashburton's park unaccountably forsook their nests. Almost immediately afterwards occurred Lady Ashburton's death, and many stories of a similar character are told. As I leant over the fence, watching what was going on in the rookery, I heard a strange low cry in the distance, as of something unearthly and eërie--what Bess once said sounded like the "call-note of a witch." I remarked in the great black bird that came overhead, a different flight, slower and heavier than that of a rook, and I recognized in the bird approaching a carrion crow. I stood motionless. The rooks were too much occupied with their building operations to notice the enemy, but the peewits, who lay earlier in the meadow beyond, were calling uneasily, uttering that strange cry of alarm which is their special note of warning. On flew the carrion crow, the bird of ill-omen in the old ballads and a messenger of death according to old belief. Anyway, if not quite so evil as he has been represented, the crow is a bird that does great damage to keepers and farmers and has few friends. As he flew away, I heard at regular intervals, his creepy wicked cry. Old Shropshire folks still repeat to their grandchildren, when they see a carrion crow-- "Dead 'orse, dead 'orse, Where? Where? Prolly Moor. Prolly Moor. We'll come, we'll come. There's nought but bones."