Cray-fishing is a very popular amusement among the villagers.  These fresh-water lobsters abound in the gravelly reaches of the Coln.  They are caught at night in small round nets, which are baited and let down to the bottom of the pools.  The crayfish crawl into the nets to feed, and are hauled up by the dozen.  Two men can take a couple of bucketfuls of them on any evening in September.  Though much esteemed in Paris, where they fetch a high price as ecrevisse, we must confess they are rather disappointing when served up.  The village people, however, are very fond of them; and Tom Peregrine, the keeper, in his quaint way describes them as “very good pickings for dessert.”  As they eat a large number of very small trout, as well as ova, on the gravel spawning-beds, crayfish should not be allowed to become too numerous in a trout stream.

It is difficult to understand in what the great attraction of rook-shooting consists.  Up to yesterday I had never shot a rook in my life.  The accuracy with which some people can kill rooks with a rifle is very remarkable.  I have seen my brother knock down five or six dozen without missing more than one or two birds the whole time.  One would be thankful to die such an instantaneous death as these young rooks.  They seem to drop to the shot without a flutter; down they come, as straight as a big stone dropped from a high wall.  Like a lump of lead they fall into the nettles.  They hardly ever move again.  It is difficult work finding them in the thick undergrowth.

About eleven o’clock the evening after shooting the young rooks I was returning home from a neighbouring farmhouse when I heard the most lamentable sounds coming from the rookery.  There seemed to be a funeral service going on in the big ash trees.  Muffled cawings and piteous cries told me that the poor old rooks were mourning for their children.  I cannot remember ever hearing rooks cawing at that time of night before.  Saving the lark, “that scorner of the ground,” which rises and sings in the skies an hour before sunrise, the rooks are the first birds to strike up at early dawn.  One often notices this fact on sleepless nights.  About 2.30 o’clock on a May morning a rook begins the grand concert with a solo in G flat; then a cock pheasant crows, or an owl hoots; moorhens begin to stir, and gradually the woodland orchestra works up to a tremendous burst of song, such as is never heard at any hour but that of sunrise.

     “Now the rich stream of music winds along,
      Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
      Through verdant vales.”

How often one has heard this grand thanksgiving chorus of the birds at early dawn!

I wonder if the poor rooks caw all night long after the “slaughter of the innocents?” They were still at it when I went to bed at 12.30, and this was within two hours of their time of getting up.

     “Some say that e’en against that season cornea
      In which our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
      The bird of dawning singeth all night long.”