212 Habits of the Carrion Crow, 



A very small share of precaution, on the part of the hen- 

 wife, would effectually preserve her chickens and her duck- 

 lings from the dreaded grasp of the carrion crow. Let her 

 but attend to the suggestion of setting her early ducks' eggs 

 under a hen, and let her keep that hen from rambling, and 

 she will find her best hopes realised. As for the game, I 

 verily believe that, in most cases, the main cause of the 

 destruction of its eggs may be brought home to the game- 

 keeper himself. This unrelenting butcher of our finest and 

 rarest British birds goes, forsooth, and makes a boast to his 

 master that he has a matter of five hen pheasants hatching in 

 such a wood, and as many partridges in the adjacent mea- 

 dows. This man probably never reflects that, in his rambles 

 to find the nests of these birds, he has made a track, which 

 will often be followed up by the cat, the fox, and the weasel, 

 to the direful cost of the sitting birds ; and, moreover, that 

 by his own obtrusive and unexpected presence in a place 

 which ought to be free from every kind of inspection, whether 

 of man or beast, he has driven the bird precipitately from 

 her nest, by which means the eggs are left uncovered. Now, 

 the carrion crow, sweeping up and down in quest of food, 

 takes advantage of this forced absence of the bird from her 

 uncovered eggs, and pounces down upon them. He carries 

 them off, not in his bill, but on the point of it, having thrust 

 his upper mandible through the shell. Had there been no 

 officious prying on the part of the keeper, it is very probable 

 that the game would have hatched its brood in safety, even in 

 the immediate vicinity of the carrion crow's nest ; for instinct 

 never fails to teach the sitting bird what to do. Thus, in 

 the wild state, when wearied nature calls for relaxation, the 

 pheasant first covers her eggs, and then takes wing directly, 

 without running from the nest. I once witnessed this, and 

 concluded that it was a general thing. From my sitting- 

 room, in the attic story of the house, I saw a pheasant fly 

 from her nest in the grass ; and, on her return, she kept on 

 wing till she dropped down upon it. By this instinctive pre- 

 caution of rising immediately from the nest on the bird's 

 departure, and its dropping on it at its return, there is neither 

 scent produced, nor track made, in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood, by which an enemy might have a clew to find it out, 

 and rob it of its treasure. These little wiles are the very 

 safety of the nest ; and I suspect that they are put in practice 

 by most birds which have their nest on the ground. To these 

 wiles, in part (before gangs of forty or fifty nocturnal poachers 

 desolated this district), I attributed the great increase of my 

 pheasants, though they were surrounded by hawks, jays, 



