They have also fierce combats now and then with an invading hawk, and
will drive him off from their territories by a _posse comitatus_. They
are also extremely tenacious of their domains, and will suffer no
other bird to inhabit the grove or its vicinity. There was a very
ancient and respectable old bachelor owl, that had long had his
lodgings in a corner of the grove, but has been fairly ejected by the
rooks; and has retired, disgusted with the world, to a neighbouring
wood, where he leads the life of a hermit, and makes nightly
complaints of his ill-treatment.
The hootings of this unhappy gentleman may generally be heard in the
still evenings, when the rooks are all at rest; and I have often
listened to them of a moonlight night with a kind of mysterious
gratification. This gray-bearded misanthrope, of course, is highly
respected by the Squire; but the servants have superstitious notions
about him, and it would be difficult to get the dairy-maid to venture
after dark near to the wood which he inhabits.
Beside the private quarrels of the rooks, there are other misfortunes
to which they are liable, and which often bring distress into the most
respectable families of the rookery. Having the true baronial spirit
of the good old feudal times, they are apt now and then to issue forth
from their castles on a foray, and to lay the plebeian fields of the
neighbouring country under contribution; in the course of which
chivalrous expeditions, they now and then get a shot from the rusty
artillery of some refractory farmer.
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