RAVENS 103 



to clap under the rocks containing the eyrie, before 

 the brooding bird would deign to leave ; rarely, 

 in the shades of evening or in a mist, I have won 

 to within a few yards of a brooding Raven, whose 

 nest was in a broken-up mountain side or diminu- 

 tive precipice ; but I still have to hear of a Raven 

 sitting remarkably and really close. 



The " sitter " having been flushed, both Ravens 

 dash about with a quicker flight than usual a 

 regular winnow in fact alternating this display 

 by tumbling angrily and sometimes by, from an 

 immense height, indulging in stupendous, headlong 

 dives with fast-closed wings towards the ground. 

 They vent their displeasure in no measured terms 

 by a great variety of croaks, amongst which the 

 syllables croc, cmc, pruck (a singularly metallic 

 sound) and whiur, all find place, besides other notes 

 impossible to describe on paper. Sometimes they 

 will the male particularly dash close past an 

 intruder as he gets near the nest, on rare occasions 

 so close in fact that an ordinary alpenstock could 

 touch them ; or, again, one or both will settle on 

 some boulder within a few yards of the inquisitive 

 cragsman, ruffling their hackle-like neck-feathers 

 and gruffing their remonstrances. Such behaviour 

 is, however, quite unusual, as is the excess of fury 

 displayed by individual Ravens which, when their 

 eyrie holds young (once I saw it happen over eggs, 

 only then the birds tore up lumps of turf from the 

 ground), will perch on any adjacent tree sprawling 



