68 GAME PRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS. 



it was at liberty. No doubt the poor hungry 

 creature was glad to make a meal of any bird 

 it saw passing, and had not the wit to find game 

 birds which naturally concealed themselves 

 whenever he appeared ; but our head keeper in 

 fifteen years had not only never seen a falcon 

 kill a hoodie crow, but has never found the 

 remains of one which seemed to have been 

 killed by a hawk. 



We have known a pair of crows build and 

 rear their young on a solitary tree on an island 

 in the middle of a small loch in the centre of 

 the hunting ground of a pair of falcons where 

 the remains of grouse and ducks were foimd 

 every week. We ourselves twice saw the falcon 

 strike at one of the crows, which, by a sudden 

 change of front, turned in the ah^ and presented 

 beak and claws to the attack, and the hawk 

 seemed to fear to charge home. These were 

 the tactics adopted by two pair of ravens which 

 bred on the same mountain as these falcons. 

 They were always fighting when the falcons 



