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Updated: June 12, 2025
Their loud cawing is often most distracting; but they are also bold thieves, and do not hesitate to enter houses when they see their opportunity and to carry off any portable article which comes first to hand, even when it is of no possible use to them. Some of the birds of prey are beautiful objects, on account of their size, and the boldness of their flight.
For the last time we looked on the wide extent of country visible from the terrace, and saw the last rays of the sun tinge the dark masses of wood variegated by autumnal tints; the uncultivated fields and smokeless cottages lay in shadow below; the Thames wound through the wide plain, and the venerable pile of Eton college, stood in dark relief, a prominent object; the cawing of the myriad rooks which inhabited the trees of the little park, as in column or thick wedge they speeded to their nests, disturbed the silence of evening.
Through the big old-fashioned window she could see the garden and at a little distance bushes of lilac in full flower, drowsy and lifeless from the cold; and the thick white mist was floating softly up to the lilac, trying to cover it. Drowsy rooks were cawing in the far-away trees. "My God, why is my heart so heavy?" Perhaps every girl felt the same before her wedding. There was no knowing!
As he passed the inner one, leading into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange, drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep. As Abel went out, she was singing the first verse: "The swallow twitters on the barn, The rook is cawing on the tree, And in the wood the ringdove coos, But my false love hath fled from me." Abel opened the door, and looked out.
The sounds were all in unison with the hour, and the lowing of cattle, the voices of the husbandmen returning from their work, mingled with the cawing of the rooks newly alighted on the high trees near the church, told them that bird, man, and beast were seeking their home for the night.
Of winter afternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the gaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned him to Southwark.
"It seems only a few minutes ago that we heard the crows cawing in the branches, and the woods were full of small noises of squirrels and birds." She leaned forward and prodded the fire absently with a stick, gazing into the flames as if fascinated. Presently a whiff of smoke unlike that from the burning faggots reached her, and she looked up to see that he had lighted his pipe.
"The moon was glistening on the sea when I went to bed that night, and when I got up in the morning the sun was shining on it, and a crow cut across my window cawing, and I heard grandfather humming to himself on the path below.
Presently she started at the sound of a gun, which caused a mighty cawing among the rooks in the trees on the slopes, and a circling of the black creatures in the sky. A whistling then was heard, and her brother Herbert came in sight in a few minutes more, a fine tall youth of sixteen, with quite the air and carriage of a gentleman.
It was only just light as he looked lazily out of the wide windows, and saw the tops of the great elms, and the rooks circling about and cawing remonstrances to the lazy ones of their commonwealth before starting in a body for the neighbouring ploughed fields.
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