The Chough 
Oberon what happened to the rustics 
when Bottom reappeared among them 
wearing the ass’s head, he gives an ex- 
cellent description of the effect of the 
discharge of a fowling-piece at a bird- 
haunted cliff: 
When they him spy, 
As russet-pated choughs, many in sort, 
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report, 
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky : 
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly. 
The Chough together with the other 
members of the Crow family was thought 
to have a supernatural prophetic gift, 
and a faculty of revealing hidden deeds. 
-Macbeth’s evil conscience was troubled 
with the thought that 
1 Midsummer-Night’s Dream, 1. ii. 19. "The chough, by 
association with man, may become a companionable creature. 
At Ardkinglas, Loch Fyne, Lady Noble has kept for some 
years a couple of choughs, brought from Ireland, which 
are at liberty to fly about the woods and hills, but come 
back to the mansion house for food and attend their mis- 
tress or her guests along the pathways. They even come 
into the house and perch on the hand of any one who has 
the courage to invite them. 
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