FORGIVE me for this trivia while the world is in its present turmoil, but I just had to tell someone.

As you see from my address I live in a copse of trees on the edge of the old Vickers site and I share my occupation of the copse with a rookery and a host of other occupants: rabbits, mice, 11 varieties of bird etc. But it is the rooks that I wish to write about, and more to the point, their undoubted intelligence.

Living in a copse has certain aerial disadvantages. Years of refusing to cull the rookery has resulted in a severe shortage of nest sites. I decided that the birds could nest anywhere except in the stand of horse chestnut trees outside my back door.

Over the past four years there have been efforts by the rooks to build in these trees. I on my part have resisted this colonisation. My method, because I will not kill creatures doing their natural thing, has been to harass the building of the nest with my .22 air rifle by shooting as close as I dare without hurting the rooks.

You would think that this would be sufficient, but not so. These birds have persisted right up to the point of laying when my rate of fire has had to increase and get very close to Mr and Mrs R.

Now for their intelligence: overnight to very early morning and I have watched them do it the birds have dismantled and removed the entire nest elsewhere.

A one-off, you might say. No, this has happened for the last four years.

So the birds are intelligent without doubt.

My ex-partner used to rescue the fledglings that sometimes fall out of the nests on windy days. We have had up to six or seven at a time and used to teach them to fly on Vickers Sports Club tennis court.

Even after we released it, one of them used to come out of the trees when called. "Gertie" was its name and we would feed it tit-bits.

L R STEWART

Cottage Hunt's Copse

Stirling Road

South Marston

Swindon