Habits of the Carrion Crow. 211 



fortnight. Unobserved by any body, I put the old duck 

 and her young ones in a pond, nearly three hundred yards 

 from a high fir tree in which a carrion crow had built its 

 nest : it contained five young ones almost fledged. I took 

 my station on the bridge, about one hundred yards from the 

 tree. Nine times the parent crows flew to the pond, and 

 brought back a duckling each time to their young. I saved 

 a tenth victim by timely interference. When a young brood 

 is attacked by an enemy, the old duck does nothing to defend 

 it. In lieu of putting herself betwixt it and danger, as the 

 dunghill fowl would do, she opens her mouth, and shoots 

 obliquely through the water, beating it with her wings. 

 During "these useless movements, the invader secures his 

 prey with impunity. 



I would recommend all henwives, in early spring, to place 

 their ducks' eggs under a hen. At that time of the year there 

 are no weeds on ponds sufficiently high to afford shelter to 

 the young, when they are led on to the water by their real 

 mother. If the first sitting of eggs be taken from a duck, 

 she will generally lay a second time ; and that will be at a 

 period when the water abounds with weeds, amongst which the 

 young brood can skulk, and screen itself from the watchful 

 eye of an enemy. 



From what 1 have written, the reader may be able to form 

 a pretty correct idea of the habits of the carrion crow ; and 

 he will perceive that, for nearly ten months of the year, this 

 bird, far from being considered an enemy, ought to be pro- 

 nounced the friend of man. 



Let us now examine if the attacks of this bird on domestic 

 poultry cannot be easily counteracted ; and whether its assi- 

 duous attention to the nests of pheasants and of partridges is 

 of so alarming and so important a nature as to call for its 

 utter extermination from the land. For my own part, I 

 acknowledge that I should lament his final absence from our 

 meadows and our woods. His loud and varied notes at early 

 dawn, and again at latest eve, are extremely grateful to me : 

 and many an hour of delight do I experience, when, having 

 mounted up to the top of a favourite aged oak which grows 

 on the border of a swamp, I see him chasing the heron and 

 the windhover through the liquid void, till they are lost in 

 the distance. Then, again, how eager is his pursuit ! — how 

 loud his croaking ! — how inveterate his hostility ! — when he 

 has espied a fox stealing away from the hounds, under the 

 covert of some friendly hedge. His compact and well-built 

 figure, too, and the fine jet black of his plumage, are, in my 

 eye, beautifully ornamental to the surrounding sylvan scenery. 



p 2 



