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feathers are especially light; the bill, legs, and eyes are of the 
usual colour. 
The sub-order CoNnrrosTRES contains the Larks, Buntings, 
Finches, Starlings, and Crows. With the exception of the Chough 
and that rare bird the Nutcracker, all the British Corvidee are well 
represented in this district, the Hooded Crow alone being rare. 
Almost universally disliked as they are, the stronger kinds need all 
their well-known sagacity and cunning to enable them to hold their 
own even in this comparatively wild country. Facile princeps stands 
THE RAVEN. 
This fine bird is still commonly to be seen and heard upon 
the fells, circling round and round high out of gunshot, croaking 
hoarse defiance at man—the only enemy he dreads, if we except 
the Peregrine. The Raven soars exceedingly high, far above the 
tops of our highest mountains, from which altitude he is able to 
survey a wide tract of country, and use his keen sight to discover 
carrion or other food, which he does with wonderful quickness. 
The Raven occasionally also feeds on young ducks, chickens, 
small quadrupeds, moles, eggs, grain, grubs, reptiles, and shell-fish, 
not unfrequently visiting the yards and “‘middens” of the fell farms 
in the early hours of the morning. They are known to pair for 
life, and are generally seen in company. I once saw three together 
on the top of Coniston Old Man. The nest is placed on the 
ledges of rocky cliffs and precipices, generally in some most 
inaccessible spot; though one nest which I visited in 1879, near 
Keswick, was not more than twenty feet from the ground, and 
within five hundred yards of a farm-house. From another nest a 
young bird was brought to me, which I kept for some weeks till 
he escaped, and I watched him wing his way back to his native 
hills rejoicing. I had hoped to have been able to show you a live 
Raven to-night which I had succeeded in taming so that I was 
able to keep him quite at liberty in the garden. Often when I 
when I went out riding he would fly above my head for a consider- 
able distance, and perch on the roof of any house I visited. His 
ao Ty 
