The hooded crow is common in this part of the country, during the winter; to the extent, indeed, of being quite a feature of it. With the country people he is the carrion crow merely, and they do not appear to make any distinction between him and the ordinary bird of that name, which is not seen nearly so often. He is the one they have grown up with, and know best, but his pied colouring does not seem to have gained him any specially distinctive title. For the most part, these crows haunt the open warren-lands, and, owing to their wariness and the absence of cover, are very difficult to get near to. Like the rooks, they spend most of the day in looking for food, and eating it when found, their habit being to beat about in the air, making wider or narrower circles, whilst examining the ground beneath for any offal that may be lying there. This is not so much the habit of rooks, for they, being more general feeders, march over the country, eating whatever they can find. They would be neglecting too much, were they to look for any class of thing in particular, though equally appreciative of offal when it happens to come in their way. “The Lord be praised!” is then their attitude of mind.

The crows, however, feed a good deal in this latter way, too, and, as a consequence, mingle much with the rooks, from whom, perhaps, they have learnt a thing or two. Each bird, in fact, knows and practises something of the other’s business, so that, without specially seeking one another’s society, they are a good deal thrown together. Were there never any occasion for them to mingle, they would probably not feel the wish to do so, but the slightest inducement will bring crows amongst rooks, and rooks amongst crows, and then, in their actions towards each other, they seem to be but one species. They fight, of course; at least there are frequent disagreements and bickerings between them, but these have always appeared to me to be individual, merely—not to have any specific value, so to speak. Both of them fall out, amongst themselves, as do most other birds. Rooks, especially, are apt to resent one another’s success in the finding of food, but such quarrels soon settle themselves, usually by the bird in possession swallowing the morsel; they are seldom prolonged or envenomed. So it is with the rooks and hooded crows, and, on the whole, I think they meet as equals, though there may, perhaps, be a slightly more “coming-on disposition” on the part of the latter, and a slightly more giving-way one on that of the former bird. One apparent instance of this I have certainly seen. In this case, two rooks who were enjoying a dead rat between them, walked very tamely away from it, when a crow came up; and, later, when they again had the rat, a pair of crows hopping down upon them, side by side, in a very bold and piratical manner, again made them retreat, with hardly a make-believe of resistance. But one of these two crows may have been the bird that had come up before, and the rat may have belonged to it and its mate, by right of first discovery, which, in important finds, there is, I think, a tendency to respect, even if it needs some amount of enforcing. I have observed this when rooks and hooded crows have been gathered together about some offal which they were devouring. One or, at most, two birds seemed always to be in possession, whilst the rest stood around. For any other to insinuate itself into a place at the table was an affair demanding caution, nor could he do so without making himself liable to an attack, serious in proportion to the hunger of the privileged bird. As it began to appear, however, either from the latter’s languidness, or by his moving a little away, that this was becoming appeased, another—either rook or crow—would, at first warily, and then more boldly, fall to; and thus, without, probably, any actual idea of the thing, the working out of the situation was, more or less, to take it in turns. At least it was always the few that ate, and the many that waited, and a general sense that this should and must be so seemed to obtain. Always, at such scenes, there will be many small outbreaks, and when these have been between the two species, I have been unable to make out that one was inferior to the other. But such ebullitions have more of threatening in them than real fighting, so, taking into consideration the incident just recorded, it may be that the crow, when really in earnest, is recognised by the rook as the better bird, though, if anything, I think he is a little the smaller of the two. Jackdaws, on the other hand, seem conscious of their inferiority when with rooks, and slip about demurely amongst them, as though wishing not to be noticed.

On the part of either rook or crow, a combative inclination is indicated by the sudden bending down of the head, and raising and fanning out of the tail. The fan is then closed and lowered, as the head goes up again, and this takes place several times in succession. If a bird come within slighting distance of one that has thus expressed himself, there is, at once, an affaire, the two jumping suddenly at one another. After the first pass or two, they pause by mutual consent—just as duellists do in a novel—and then stand front to front, the beaks—or rapiers—being advanced, and pointed a little upwards, their points almost touching. Then, instantaneously, they spring again, each bird trying to get above the other, so as to strike him down. These fireworks, indeed, belong more to the rooks than the crows, for the former, being more social birds, are also more demonstrative. Not that the crows are without the gregarious instinct. Here, at least, in East Anglia, one may see in them something like the rude beginnings of the state at which rooks have arrived. They do not flock in any numbers, but bands of six or seven, and upwards, will sometimes fly about together, or sit in the same tree or group of trees. On the ground, too, though they feed in a much more scattered manner than do rooks, not seeming to think of one another, they yet get drawn together by any piece of garbage or carrion that one or other of them may find. In this we, perhaps, see the origin of the gregarious instinct in most birds, if not in all. Self-interest first makes a habit, which becomes, by degrees, a want, and so a necessity; for if “custom is the king of all men,” as Pindar has pronounced it to be, so is it the king of all birds, and, equally, of all other animals.

I think, myself, that their association with the rooks tends to make these crows more social. They get to feed more as they do, and this brings them more together. In the evening I have, sometimes, seen a few fly down into a plantation where rooks roosted, and which they already filled, and one I once saw flying, with a small band of them, on their bedward journey. Whether this bird, or the others, actually roosted with the rooks, for the night, I cannot say, but it certainly looked like it. On the other hand, if one watches rooks, one will, sometimes, see what looks like a reversion, on the part of an individual or two, to a less advanced social state than that in which the majority now are. Whether there are solitary rooks, as there are rogue elephants, I do not know, but the gregarious instinct may certainly be for a time in abeyance with some, if not with all of them. I have watched one feeding, sometimes, for a length of time, quite by itself. Not only, on such occasions, have there been no others with it, but often none were in sight, nor did any join it, when it flew up. Nothing, in fact, can look more solitary than these black specks upon the wide, empty warrens, or the still more desolate marshes—fens, as they are called, though, as I say, Icklingham is separated from the real fenlands by some seven miles. These fens are undrained, and unless the weather has been dry for some time, it is difficult to get about in them. At first sight, indeed, it looks as though one could do so easily enough, for the long, coarse grass grows in tufts, or cushions—one might almost call them—each one of which is raised, to some height, upon a sort of footstalk. But if one steps on these they often turn over, causing one to plunge into the water between them, which their heads make almost invisible. These curious, matted tufts were used here in old days for church hassocks—called pesses—and several of them, veritable curiosities, are now in the old thatched church at Icklingham, which has been abandoned—why I know not—and is fast going to ruin.

Rooks sometimes visit these marshes for the sake of thistles which grow there, or just on their borders, the roots of which they eat, as do also, I believe, some of the hooded crows, since I have seen them excavating in the same places. I know of no more comfortless sight than one or two of these crows standing about on the sodden ground, whilst another sits motionless, like an overseer, in some solitary hawthorn bush, in the grey dawn of a cold winter’s morning. In the dank dreariness they look as dank and dreary themselves, and seem to be regretting having got up. There is, indeed, something particularly shabby and dismal-looking in the aspect of the hooded crow, when seen under unfavourable circumstances. They impress one, I believe, as squalid savages would—as the Tierra del Fuegians did Darwin. The rook, at all times, looks much more civilised, even when quite alone. I am not sure whether the latter bird, to return to his occasional adoption of less social habits, ever roosts alone, but I have some reason to suspect that he does. I have seen one flying from an otherwise untenanted clump of trees, before the general flight out from the rook-roost, two or three miles distant, had begun; to judge by appearances, that is to say, for the usual stream in one direction did not begin till some little time afterwards. A populous roosting-place drains the whole rook population of the country, for a considerable distance all around it—far beyond that at which this rook was from his—and in January, which was the date of the observation, such establishments would not have begun to break up. This process, which leads to scattered parties of the birds passing the night in various new places, does not begin before March.

I had heard this particular rook cawing, for some time, before I saw it, and, on other occasions, I have been struck by hearing solitary caws, in unfrequented places, at a similarly early hour. Some rooks, therefore, may be less social in their ways than the majority, and if these could be separately studied, we might know what all rooks had once been. The present natural history book contents itself with a summary of the general habits of each species, as far as these are known or surmised, or rather as far as one compiler may learn them from another sÆcula sÆculorum. It is to be hoped that, some day in the future, a work may be attempted which will record those variations from the general mode of life, which have been observed and noted down by successive generations of field-naturalists. A collection of these would help as much, perhaps, to solve some of the problems of affinity, as the dissection of the body, and there would be this advantage in the method, viz., that any species under discussion would be less likely to leave a still further gap in the various classificatory systems, by disappearing during the process of investigation.

I have said that rooks and crows meet and mingle together, as though they were of the same species, but is there, to the boot of this, some special relation—what, it would puzzle me to say—existing between them? I remember once, whilst standing under a willow tree by the little stream here, my attention being attracted by a hooded crow, which, whilst flying, kept uttering a series of very hoarse, harsh cries, “Are-rr, are-rr, are-rr” (or “crar”)—the intonation is much rougher and less pleasant than that of rooks. He did not fly right on, and so away, but kept hovering about, in approximately the same place, and still continuing his clamour. I fancied I heard an answer to it from another hooded crow in the distance, and then, all at once, up flew about a score of rooks and joined him. For some minutes they hovered about, over a space corresponding with a fair-sized meadow, the crow making one of them, and still, at intervals, continuing to cry, the rooks talking much less. Then, all at once, they dispersed again over the country. What, if anything, could have been the meaning of this rendezvous? All I can imagine is that, when the rooks heard the repeated cries of the crow, they concluded he had found something eatable, and, therefore, flew up to share in it, but that, seeing nothing, they hovered about for a time on the look-out and then gave it up and flew off. I can form no idea, however, of what it was that had excited the crow, for excited he certainly seemed—it was a sudden burst of “are”-ing. He did not go down anywhere, so that it can have had nothing to do with a find, and I feel sure from the way he came up, and the place and distance at which he began to cry, that he had not seen me. This, then, was my theory, at the time, to account for the action of the rooks; but on the very next day something of the same sort occurred, which was yet not all the same, and which could not be explained in this way. This time, when a crow rose with his “crar, crar” and flew to some trees, a number of rooks rose also from all about, and after circling a little, each where it had gone up, flew to a plantation, where shortly the crow flew also. Here, again, there was no question of the crow having found anything, for he rose from where he had for some time been, and flew straight away. Nor could the rooks have imagined that he had, for they all rose as at a signal, and, without going to where he had been, flew to somewhere near where he had gone, and here they were shortly joined by him. Certainly the rooks were influenced by the crow—the crow afterwards by the rooks, I think—but in what way, or whether there was any definite idea on the part of either of them, I am unable to say. Birds of different species often affect one another, psychically, in some way that one cannot quite explain. I have seen some small tits flying, seemingly full of excitement, with the first band of rooks from the roosting-place in the morning, and, evening after evening, a wood-pigeon would beat about amongst the hosts of starlings, which filled the whole sky around their dark little dormitory. He would join first one band and then another, seeming to wish to make one of them, and this he continued to do almost as long as the starlings remained. Peewits, again, seem to have an attraction for starlings, and other such instances, either of mutual or one-sided interest—generally, I think, the latter—may be observed. We need not, I think, assume that every case of commensalism amongst animals has had a utilitarian origin, even when we can now see the link of mutual benefit.

Rooks, when once introduced, are not birds that can be lightly dismissed. The most interesting thing about them, in my opinion, is their habit of repairing daily to their nesting-trees during the winter. Two visits are paid—at least two clearly marked ones—one in the morning, the other in the later afternoon, taking the shortness of the days into consideration. The latter is the longer and more important one, and, to give a general idea of what happens upon it, I will describe the behaviour of some birds on which I got the glasses fixed, whilst watching, one Christmas, a small rookery, in some elms near the house. It is always stated that rooks visit their nests, during the winter, in order to repair them. The following slight but accurate account of what the birds really do during these visits, is to be read in connection with that statement, which, as it appears to me, is either inaccurate, or, at least, not sufficiently full. Towards 3, then, as I have it, like Mr. Justice Stareleigh, in my notes, the rooks flew in, and of these a certain number settled in the largest elm of the group. This contained, besides other nests, two, if not more, that were built close against each other, making one great mass of sticks. One rook perched upon the topmost of these nests, whilst another sat in the lower one. The standing rook kept uttering deep caws, and, at each caw, he made a sudden dip forward, with his head and whole body. At the same time he shot up and spread open the feathers of his tail, which he also arched, becoming, thus, a much finer figure of a bird. The action seemed to express sexual emotion, with concomitant bellicosity, and the latter element was soon manifested in a spirited attack upon the poor sitting rook, who was, then and there, turned out of the nest. Shortly afterwards, a pair of rooks peaceably occupied this same lower nest, and continued there for some time. One of them sat in it, and, looking long and steadily through the glasses, I could see the tail of this bird thrown, at short intervals, spasmodically upwards. Then, as the raised and spread feathers were folded and lowered, the anal portion of the body was moved—wriggled—in a very special and suggestive manner, about which I shall have more to say when I come to the peewit. Whilst the sitting bird was behaving in this way, the other one of the pair—which I put down as the female—stood beside him, and as she occasionally bent forward towards him, the black of her feathers becoming lost in his, I felt assured that she was cossetting and caressing him, much as the hen pigeon caresses the male, whilst he sits brooding on the place where the nest will be. There were also several other combats, and more turnings of one bird out of the nest, by another. At 3.15 four rooks sit perched on the boughs, all round the great mass of sticks, but not one upon it. One of the four bends the head, with a look and motion as though about to hop down. Instantly there is an excited cawing—half, as it seems, remonstrative, half in the tone of “Well, if you do, then I will, too,”—from the other three, which is responded to, of course, by the first, the originator of the uproar, and then all four drop on to the sticks, a pair upon each nest. By 3.20 every rook is gone, but in ten minutes they are all back, again, with much cawing. Four birds—the same four as I suppose—are instantly on the great heap, but as quickly off it, again, amongst the growing twigs, and this takes place three or four times in succession. Two others, though they never come down upon the heap, remain close beside it, and seem to feel a friendly interest in it. Sometimes they fly away for a little, but they return, again, and sit there as before, their right to do so seeming to be admitted. Thus there are six birds in all, who seem primarily interested in the great heap of sticks, which may, perhaps, indicate that it is composed of three rather than of two nests. Once, however, for a little while, another rook is associated with the six, making seven. At 3.45 the rooks again fly off, but return in another ten minutes, and this time the tree with the great communal nest in it is left empty. There is a great deal of cawing, mingled with a higher, sharper note, all very different to the cries made by the rooks, at this same time of the year, in their roosting-places, or when leaving or returning to them in the morning or evening. It was for this latter purpose, doubtless, that the final exodus took place at a little past 4. During the last visit no nest was entered by any bird.

Do the rooks, then, come to their nests in winter, in order to repair them? Not once, so far as I could catch their actions, did I see one of these lift a stick, and their behaviour on other occasions, when I have watched them, has been more or less the same. On the other hand we have the combats, the clamorous vociferation, the caressing of one bird by another, the raising and fanning of the tail, with the curious wriggling of it—bearing, in my mind, a peculiar significance—everything, in fact, to suggest sexual emotion. To me it appears that the nests are visited rather for the sake of sport and play, than with any set business-like idea of putting them in order. The birds come to them to be happy and excited, to have genial feelings aroused by the sight of them—

They come, in fact, as it seems to me, in an emotional state a good deal resembling that of the bower-birds of Australia, when they play at their “runs” or “bowers”; nor do the nests now—though in the spring they were true ones—differ essentially, as far as the purpose to which they are put is concerned, from these curious structures, of which Gould says: “They are used by the birds as a playing-house, and are used by the males to attract the females.” This latter statement is certainly true, in the case, at least, of the satin bower-bird (Ptilorhynchus violaceus), which I have watched at the Zoological Gardens. That the mainspring, so to speak, of this bird’s actions is sexual, no naturalist, seeing them, could doubt. But was the “bower” originally made for the purpose which it now serves? Did the idea of putting it to such a use precede its existence in some shape or form, or did it not rather grow out of something else, because about it, as it then was, certain emotions were more and more indulged in, till at last it became the indispensable theatre for their display? Then, as the theatre grew, no doubt the play did also, and vice versÂ, the two keeping pace with each other. I believe that this original something was the nest, and that when we see a bird toy, court, or pair upon the latter—thus putting it to a use totally different from that of incubation, but similar to that which is served by the bower—we get a hint as to the process by which the one structure has given rise to the other.

Wonderful as is the architecture and ornamentation of some of the bowers, as we now know them, especially the so-called garden of amblyornis, their gradual elaboration from a much simpler structure presents no more difficulty than does that of a complicated nest from a quite ordinary one. All that we want is the initial directing impulse, and this we have when once a bird uses its nest, not only as a cradle for its young, but, also, as a nuptial bed or sporting-place. In a passage of this nature, the nest, indeed, must remain, but why should it not? Let us suppose that, like the rooks, the bower-birds—or, rather, their ancestors—used, at one time, to use their old nests of the spring, as play-houses during the winter. If, then, they had built fresh nests as spring again came round, might they not gradually have begun to build fresh play-houses too? The keeping up of the old nest—but for a secondary purpose—would naturally have passed into this, and the playing about it would, as naturally, have led to the keeping of it up. That duality of use should gradually have led to duality of structure—that from one thing used in two different ways there should have come to be two things, each used in one of these ways—does not seem to me extraordinary, but, rather, what we might have expected, in accordance with the principle of differentiation and specialisation, which has played so great a part in organic evolution. It is by virtue of this principle that limbs have been developed out of the vertebral column, and the kind of advantage which all vertebrate animals have gained by this multiplication and differentiation of parts, in their own bodily structure, is precisely that which a bird of certain habits would have gained, by a similar increase in the number and kind of the artificial structures made by it. It is, indeed, obvious that the “bower,” in many cases, could not be quite what it is, if it had also to answer the purpose of a nest, and still more so, perhaps, that the nest could never have made a good bower. The extra structure, therefore, represents a greater capacity for doing a certain thing—just as do the extra limbs—which makes it likely that it has been evolved from the earlier one, in accordance with the same general law which has produced the latter.

Thus, in our own rook we see, perhaps, a bower-bird in posse, nor is there any wide gap, but quite the contrary, between the crow family and that to which the bower-birds belong. “The bower-birds,” says Professor Newton, “are placed by most systematists among the ParadiseidÆ,” and Wallace, in his “Malay Archipelago,” tells us that “the ParadiseidÆ are a group of moderate-sized birds allied, in their structure and habits, to crows, starlings, and to the Australian honey-suckers.” It is, surely, suggestive that the one British bird that uses its nest—or nests, collectively—as a sort of recreation ground, where the sexes meet and show affection, during the winter, should be allied to the one group of birds that make separate structures, which they use in this same manner. Of course there are differences, but what I suggest is that there is an essential similarity, which, alone, is important. Probably the common ancestor of the bower-birds was not social in its habits like the rook, and this difference may have checked the development of the bower in the latter bird. As far, however, as the actions of the two are concerned, they do not appear to me to differ otherwise than one might expect the final stages of any process to differ from its rough and rude beginnings. The sexual impulse is, so it seems to me, the governing factor in both, so that, in both, it may have led up to whatever else there is. In regard to the rooks, they did not, when I watched them, appear to be repairing their nests. I think it quite likely, however, that they do repair them after a fashion, though I would put another meaning upon their doing so. That, being at the nest, there should often be some toying with and throwing about of the sticks, one can understand, and also that this should have passed into some amount of regular labour: for all these things—with the emotional states from which they spring—are interconnected through association of ideas, so that one would glide easily into another, and it is in this, as I believe, that we have the rationale of that amount of repairing which the rook does do. Personally, as said before, I have seen little or nothing of it.

When we consider that many birds are in the habit of building one or more supernumerary nests—not with any definite purpose, as it seems to me, but purely in obedience to the, as yet, unsatisfied instinct which urges them to build—we can, perhaps, see a line along which the principle of divergence and specialisation, as applied to the nest structure, may, on the above hypothesis, have been led. Given two uses of a nest, and more nests made than are used, might not we even prophesy that one of the redundant ones would, in time, serve one of the uses, supposing these to be very distinct, and to have a tendency to clash with one another? Now courting leads up to pairing, and I can say positively from my own observation that rooks often pair upon the nest. This is the regular habit with the crested grebes, and I have seen it in operation between them after some, or at least one, of the eggs had been laid—possibly they had all been. But this must surely be to the danger of the eggs, so that, as these birds build several nests, natural selection would favour such of them as used separate ones for pairing and laying. It does not, of course, follow that a tendency to make a secondary nest and use it for a secondary purpose would develop itself in any bird that was accustomed to pair or court upon the true one; but it might in some, and, whenever it did, the evolution of the “run” or “bower” would be but a matter of time, if, indeed, it should not be rather held to exist, as soon as such separation had come about. There would be but a slight line of demarcation, as it appears to me, between an extra nest, which was used for nuptial purposes only, and the so-called bowers of the bower-birds. As for the ornamentation which is such a feature of these latter structures, the degree of it differs amongst them, and we see the same thing—also in varying degrees—in the nest proper. The jackdaw, for instance—and the proclivity has been embalmed in our literature—is fond of putting a ring “midst the sticks and the straw” of his, and shags, as I have noticed, will decorate theirs with flowers, green leaves, and bleached spars or sticks. It seems natural, too, that an Æsthetic bird, owning two domiciles, one for domestic duties and the other for love’s delights, should decorate the latter, more and more to the neglect of the former. We see the same principle at work amongst ourselves, for even in the most artistic households, the nursery is usually a plain affair compared with the boudoir or drawing-room.

As bower-building prevails only amongst one group of birds—not being shared by allied groups—and as birds, universally almost, make some sort of nest, we may assume that the latter habit preceded the former. If so, the ancestral bower-bird, from which the various present species may be supposed to be descended, would have built a nest before he built a bower. Is it not more probable, therefore, that the new structure should have grown out of the old one, than that the two are not in any way connected? The orthodox view, indeed, would seem to be the reverse of this, for we read in standard works of ornithology that the bowers have nothing to do with the nests of the species making them; whilst, at the same time, complete ignorance as to their origin and meaning is confessed. But if we know nothing about a thing, how do we know that it has nothing to do with some other thing? One argument, brought forward to show that the nests of the bower-bird are not in any way connected with their bowers, is that the former present no extraordinary feature. But if the bower has grown out of the nest, in the way and by the steps which I suppose, there is no reason why the latter—and the bird’s general habits of nidification—should not have remained as they were. As long as a single structure was used for a double purpose, the paramount importance of the original one—that of incubation—would have kept it from changing in any great degree, and when there had come to be two structures for two purposes, that only would have been subjected to modification which stood in need of it. For the rest, as incubation and courtship are very different things, one might expect the architecture in relation to them to be of a very different kind. For these reasons, and having watched rooks at their nests in the winter, and the breeding habits of some other birds, I think it possible (1) that the bower has grown out of the nest, and (2) that the sexual activities of which it is, as it were, the focus, were once displayed about the nest itself. On the whole, however—though I suggest this as a possible explanation—it is perhaps more likely that the cleared arena where so many birds meet for the purposes of courtship—as, e.g. the blackcock, capercailzie, ruff, argus pheasant, cock-of-the-rock, &c. &c.—is the starting-point from which the bower-birds have proceeded, especially as one species of the family has not got so very much farther than this, even now.

Rooks, then, to leave speculation and return to fact, are swayed, even in winter, by love as well as by hunger—those two great forces which, as Schiller tells us, rule the world between them. They wake, presumably, hungry; yet, before they can have fed much, make shift to spend a little while on the scene of their domestic blisses. Hunger then looks after them till an hour or so before evening, when they return to their rookeries, and love takes up the ball for as long as daylight lasts. And so, with birds as men—

But there is a third great ruling power in the life of both, which Schiller seems to have forgotten—sleep—and as its reign, each day, is as long, or longer, than that of the other two conjoined, and as it long outlasts one of them, it may be called, perhaps, the greatest of the three.