A rook and a hard place

WHILE there’s no shortage of rooks, I doubt many guns will be packing wicker baskets this spring with lemonade and game pie for a light picnic to sustain those busy harvesting the young birds.

Yet the old shooting tomes in my library attest that this was once a common sport with 12 May – the traditional day – almost as celebrated as the grouse’s Twelfth. The popularity of knocking down juvenile rooks – the aptly named ‘branchers’ that were big enough to leave the nest but still incapable of flight – was partly down