The following bird stories have been related to me by two friends A. and B.:–
A.–There is is a rookery in the churchyard of Sixtowns (Draperstown district), and last year a pair of rooks left this to nest on a solitary tree at Sixtowns School, a short distance away. As the tree was convenient to the door of the dwelling-house attached to the school the noise made by the rooks soon became a nuisance, so when they started to hatch, I procured a gun, and one evening put a shot into the bottom of the nest. The sitting bird flew off, probably more startled than injured. However, to my intense surprise, there was not one stick of the nest on the tree next morning, neither was there anything connected with the nest on the ground. I could only surmise that numbers of rooks had collected and removed during the early hours of the morning the nest and its contents, bit by bit, and reconstructed it elsewhere.
B.–About five years ago, when on a holiday in Sixtowns (near Draperstown), I and a relative were taking a walk in the neighbourhood of a small rookery at a place locally known as Grahamskill Hill, when we were astonished to to observe about 40 rooks driving a couple of the same species away from the plantation. The nest of the offending pair was subsequently attacked and pulled to pieces and the contents scattered over an adjoining field.
B.–I resided for many years in Castleblayney, County Monaghan, and was well acquainted with the late Dr. Wilson, at that time a resident of the town and an ardent naturalist. I often accompanied him on his Nature Study walks, his principal hobby being the birds and their nests. I well remember being out with him one day about 25 years ago, when he told me the following remarkable story:– In his neighbourhood there was a brick building with a hole in one of the walls where a brick was missing. A pair of swallows nested in the hole and hatched out their young and migrated as usual. During their absence the wall was repaired and the hole filled with a brick. On the return of the swallows the following spring the first bird to arrive struck the brick and dropped dead, killed by the impact. The second bird arrived shortly afterwards and suffered a similar fate. The swallows probably only took a general view of the wall, and timing their flight so as to alight on the old nest at the back of the hole struck the brick instead.–“G. B. M’Keown” (Draperstown).
George Barnett 