We glean the following interesting facts from the _Essex Herald_, as
they merit the record of a _Naturalist_.
"The voracious habits of the rook, and the vast increase of these birds
of late years in certain parts of Essex, has been productive of great
mischief, especially in the vicinity of Writtle and of Waltham. Since
February last, notwithstanding a vigilant watch, the rooks have stolen
sets of potatoes from a considerable breadth of ground at Widford Hall.
On the same farm, during the sowing of a field of 16 acres with peas,
the number of rooks seen at one time on its surface has been estimated
at 1,000, which is accounted for by there being a preserve near, which,
at a moderate computation, contains 1,000 nests. But the damage done by
rooks at Navestock and Kelvedon Hatch, and their vicinities, within a
small circle, has been estimated at £2,000. annually. Many farmers pay
from 8_s_. to 10_s_. per week, to preserve their seed and plants by
watching; but notwithstanding such precautions, acre after acre of
beans, when in leaf and clear from the soil, have been pulled up, and
the crop lost. The late hurricane proved some interruption to their
breeding; and particularly at the estate of Lord Waldegrave, at
Navestock, where the young ones were thrown from their nests, and were
found under trees in myriads; the very nests blown down, it is said,
would have furnished the poor with fuel for a short period."
The writer attributes this alarming increase of rooks to "a desire on
the part of gentlemen to cause them to be preserved with the same
watchfulness they do their game." The most effectual means of deterring
the rook from their depredations, is, he says, "to obtain several of
these birds at a period of the year when they can be more easily taken;
then cut them open, and preserve them by salt. In the spring, during the
seed time, these rooks are to be fastened down to the ground with their
wings spread, and their mouths extended by a pebble, as if in great
torture. This plan has been found so effectual, that even in the
vicinity of large preserves, the fields where the dead birds have been
so placed, have not been visited by a single rook."
The scarcity of the rook in France, and the antipathy which the French
have to that bird is thus accounted for:--
"The fact has been often related by a very respectable Catholic Priest,
who resided many years at Chipping-hill, in Witham, that such was the
arbitrary conduct of the owners of abbeys and monasteries in France, in
preserving and cultivating the rook and the pigeon, that they increased
to such numbers as to become so great a pest, as to destroy the seed
when sown, and the young plants as soon as they appeared above the
ground; insomuch, that the farmer, despairing of a reward for his
labour, besides the loss of his seed, the fields were left barren, and
the supply of bread corn was, in consequence, insufficient to meet the
necessities of so rapidly increasing a people. The father of the
gentleman to whom we have alluded, was, for this offence, one of the
first victims to his imprudence. The revolutionary mob proceeded to his
residence, from whence they took him, and hung his body upon a gibbet;
they next proceeded to destroy the rooks and pigeons which he had
cultivated in great numbers, and strived to preserve with the same
tenacity as others do in this country. We are told by the son of this
martyr to his own folly, that the mob continued to shoot the birds
amidst the loudest acclamations, and that they exulted in the idea that
in each victim they witnessed the fall of an aristocrat."
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