450 



THE CARRION CROW. 



hardly so strong comparatively as the raven's, its claws are 

 sharper and more curved ; eggs, usually five, also dark green 

 and blotched, but I have got them light bluish green. They 

 are proportionally larger and more oval than the raven's — If by 

 1|- inches ; nest on trees, sometimes cliffs, of sticks, plastered, 

 inside with clay or mud, profusely lined with soft grass, wool, 

 hair, and rabbits' fur. It also breeds early, but not in 

 February, as authors say — at least in Fife — and I take my 

 authority from the book of Nature. They have eggs about 

 the same time as the rook, a month earlier than the jackdaw. 

 It sometimes pairs with the hoody crow. Like the rest of the 

 genus, it is omnivorous in the widest sense. Its chief food is 

 carrion of all kinds, young birds, quadrupeds, fishes, eggs, roots, 

 grain, or whatever it can get. But, as Bailie Nicol Jarvie 

 pawkily says, " Corbies winna pick oot corbies' een." 

 Forbidding stories are told of it attacking ewes in the lambing 

 season, and horrible acts of cruelty while carrying on its mission 

 in the world, which, I take it, are more reflections on the 

 Creator than the creature. In " The Winter's Tale" 

 Shakespeare makes Paulina say, when King Leontes ordered 

 his new-born daughter to the desert — 



Paulina — " The casting forth to crows his baby daughter 

 To be or none or little, though a devil 

 Would have shed water out of fire ere done't." 



No bird is more destroyed by gamekeepers, and the wonder is 

 it is not exterminated in the populous little "Kingdom of 

 Fife ;" but the proscribed solitary bird still lives and is by no 

 means rare about St Andrews — may be found in every fir wood 

 in the district. In 1893 a man shot seven one day on 

 Tentsmuir. It is rarer in the north and middle of Scotland. 

 About 40 years ago, wishing to know if the carrion crows bred 

 on the big Scotch firs on Tentsmuir, I walked to Eden on April 

 14th, 1855, got a push over in the mussel coble, trudged through 

 the moor, and climbed up some of the large firs on the 

 outskirts. I got a nest with five fresh eggs on the tip of a big 

 horizontal branch of one of them, 20 feet up. I measured the 

 nest. It was 18 inches over all, 8 J by 4 J deep inside, 

 compact, well built, and comfortably lined with rabbits' fur — no 

 hair nor wool, the outside pretty thick pieces of whin roots, 

 heather, branches, and fine birch twigs next the fur. The eggs 

 were dark green, blotched over with dark brown. I got 

 another with four fresh eggs, much lighter, bluish green, very 



