Notes on Game & Game Shooting; Miscellaneous Observation on Birds and Animals, and on the Sport They Afford for the Gun in Great Britain - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... ROOKS. The only reason, or rather excuse, I can offer for introducing Rooks into "Notes on Game and Game Shooting" is that, at a certain season of the year, rook shooting is a definitely recognised and widely popular branch of sport with the gun. Few birds have received more attention from naturalists than the rook, as Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne" and many similar works testify; and, indeed, it would not be very difficult to write a volume of considerable length on the habits and peculiarities of this interesting member of the Corvidse family, whose praises have been sung by Warton, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb, and, indeed, by the great majority of English poets. A grand, proud-looking bird is the rook, and when he is in full plumage his blue-black feathers have a richer gloss over them than is the case with any other English bird. So highly polished, if the expression be an admissible one, are they that at certain angles the rays of the sun will glance from them and slightly dazzle the human eye. Structurally, the rook has several interesting features. He has, for instance, a kind of pouch below the lower mandible or chin, which he can use like a monkey does his cheek for storing food, and which he actually does use for this purpose, carrying home in it food for his young family. He has a curious, scabbard-like arrangement into which he withdraws his tongue when not using it. At the base of his bill he has a strange rough skin, which in his early youth is covered with feathers. These fall off naturally before he is six months old, and are not worn off, as used to be thought, by his digging his beak into the ground; but why they should ever have been there is still a puzzle to ornithologists. The organs of smelling in a rook are very highly de...

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.