HOODED CROW, 85 



When removed from the vicinity of the sea shore, or tlie 

 banks of tide rivers, these birds seek the same sort of food as 

 the Carrion Crow, preferring animal substance of any kind, 

 seldom resorting to any vegetable production unless driven to 

 it by stern necessity. Their voice is more shrill than that 

 of the Carrion Crow ; but they are said to vary their tone 

 occasionally, producing two cries, the one hoarse, the other 

 sharp. 



So numerous are these birds on some of the western islands 

 of Scotland, that a flock of them were seen feeding on shell- 

 fish on the east coast of Jura, after a violent storm, which did 

 not contain less than five hundred, and not a single black 

 Crow among them. !Mr. Salmon, in his observations made 

 during three weeks' sojourn in Orkney, says, " We found the 

 Hooded Crow in tolerable plenty ; not associating together 

 in communities, but, like the Crow, preferring to build their 

 nests separately. These are placed among the rocks, and 

 upon the sides of the deep chasms that are to be found upon 

 the sides of the hills ; generally upon the ledge of a rock, 

 among the overhanging heather. The outside of the nest is 

 composed of withered heather, and large roots or stalks, and 

 it is lined with wool and hair. In one nest that we looked 

 into, we found three young ones, and they were almost in 

 full plumage, which had precisely the same colours as that of 

 their parents," Mr. Hunt, of Norwich, in his History of 

 British Birds, says he was told by good authority that a pair 

 of these birds had built a nest, and reared their young, 

 during the season of 1816 in the neighbourhood of King's 

 Lynn. This is the only notice I am acquainted with of this 

 bird having bred so far south in England, 



Mr, W. C. Williamson, Curator to the Natural History 

 Society, Manchester, in his notes on the appearance of rare 

 Birds in the vicinity of Scarborough, as printed in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society for the year 1 836, says, 



