244 The Common Raven 
whereby to judge the size and species of others. Hence although 
in the case of a Common Raven 24 in. in length seen in company 
with a Tangier Raven only about 18} in. long, it is easy enough 
to tell the larger from the smaller species, when severa! of the 
same species only are seen together at a distance it requires more 
skill than I can pretend to, to know which they are. It is owing 
to this difficulty that I have to confess that I have failed to 
establish the fact of the nesting of the Tangier Raven in Spain. 
As regards the ordinary methods of identification, shooting. or 
trapping, such is the perversity and cunning of all Ravens that 
it is no easy matter to shoot them, even from the nest, and as far 
as my experience goes they consistently decline to be trapped, 
preferring even to abandon their eggs to walking into a trap 
concealed in the nest. In the words of an old Spaniard who 
witnessed my discomfiture by a Raven which obviously detected 
my evil intentions: Sade ef cuervo mas que el hombre— The 
Raven knows more than the man.” Hence such evidence as I 
have to produce is of the negative type, or, in other words, where 
I have clearly verified the species nesting, it has xo¢ been the 
Tangier Raven. The one exception to this occurred in 1879, 
when on 24 April, chancing to be riding past within view of the 
pine tree where I had trapped a Red Kite three weeks previously 
(as described in the chapter on Kites), I saw a Raven fly out 
of it. On climbing up, I found the Kite’s nest had been completely 
remodelled by the Ravens, the sides had been raised by a well-knit 
parapet of sticks and enclosed a deep cup, thickly lined with goats’ 
hair, in which were five light green eggs, closely marked with 
brown and to my eyes decidedly smaller than any Ravens’ I had 
then seen. Whilst I was in the nest the old birds flew around 
and seemed to be not nearly so big as the ordinary Raven. All 
attempts to trap the old bird failed. Three days later I returned 
to the nest and found a sixth egg had been laid. On this 
