THE ZOOLOGIST
THIRD SERIES.
Vol. II.] JUNE, 1878. [No. 18. |
THE ROOKS AND ROOKERIES OF LONDON,
PAST AND PRESENT.
By Edward Hamilton, M.D., F.L.S.
With the exception of the ubiquitous House Sparrow, no birds frequenting our London parks and trees are so familiar to us as our black-coated friends the Rooks, or, as they are commonly but erroneously called, Crows. Winter and spring, summer and autumn, they may be seen stalking about searching for food, confident in their security, claiming friendship with man, yet wary withal, for they never allow too near an approach. Never disturbed by crow-boy or gun, their progeny protected and allowed to gain maturity, no rook-shooting parties to molest them, they are happy in the dust and turmoil of this overgrown city.
The Rook, indeed, is to the citizen what the Nightingale is to the countryman—the harbinger of spring; and there are few pleasanter sounds in nature than the harmonious cawing from the lofty elm which greets the ear at Eastertide. We never pass beneath a Rookery in early spring, or listen to the distant voices of our sable friends without being reminded of Longfellow's lines in 'The Birds of Killingworth':—
"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne'er think who made them and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!
Whose habitations in the tree tops even
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!"
