meadows near the river. It struck me one day as a very fine sight, when
an old bird, who looked larger and blacker and greyer-faced than the
others, and might have been the father and leader of them all, got up on
a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most
impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is
the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter
of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only
language he has--those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what
feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and
prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with the
hot sun shining on their glossy coats. Their days of want were long past
and forgotten; the anxious breeding period was over; the tempest in the
tall trees; the annual slaughter of the young birds--all past and
forgotten. The old rook was simply expressing the old truth, that life
was worth living.

These rooks were usually accompanied by two or three or more crows--a
bird of so ill-repute that the most out-and-out enthusiast for
protection must find it hard to say a word in its favour. At any rate,
the rooks must think, if they think at all, that this frequent visitor
and attendant of theirs is more kin than kind. I have related in a
former work that I once saw a peregrine strike down and kill an owl--a
sight that made me gasp with astonishment. But I am inclined to think of
this act as only a slip, a slight aberration, on the part of the falcon,
so universal is the sense of relationship among the kinds that have the
rapacious habit; or, at the worst, it was merely an isolated act of
deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden
assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence
compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his
callow little cousins of the rookery.