22 THE CROW FAMILY 



bird during the course of its individual experience, or is an instinctive 

 act, inborn like the ability of the duckling to swim when it touches 

 water, is unknown, but its effective performance is certainly either a 

 matter of practice or an individual gift. Hoodies have been re- 

 peatedly observed to drop a mollusc or bone on soft sandy ground, or 

 on grass. One let a bone drop, time after time, upon the only patch 

 of sandy ground on a long line of rocky coast. It fell at last, seem- 

 ingly by accident, on a small rock and was broken. On the other 

 hand, these birds have been seen getting mussels in the drains and 

 creeks which intersect the mud-flats of Breydon, in Norfolk, and 

 deliberately carrying them to be dropped on a stone wall. When ice 

 covered the flats, they spared themselves the trouble of going to the 

 wall, having learnt that the ice served the same purpose. In Switzer- 

 land, again, Howard Saunders noted crows dropping walnuts on the 

 flat copings of the walls of the vineyards, seldom missing the mark. 

 It is, further, interesting to note that in dealing with shells they do 

 not limit themselves to this method. They have been seen to open 

 fresh-water mussels by violent blows on the ligaments which attach 

 the valves, and it is also stated that they occasionally adopt the 

 simple expedient of hacking the shell open. 1 



That our two crows, like the raven, have in a high degree the 

 ability to profit by experience is evident from the marvellous cunning 

 that individual birds display in their conflict with the shepherd, the 

 farmer, the gamekeeper, and others, who hate them for their raids 

 on lambs, young birds and eggs. A concrete example will help us to 

 realise this more fully, and it is provided by an admirable and authori- 

 tative account of the proceedings of a pair of carrion-crows in the 

 Frankfort Zoological Garden, written by its Director, Dr. Max 

 Schmidt. These crows made a practice of robbing the eggs of the 

 waterfowl in the Garden, and it was decided to drive them away. 



1 Lilford, Birds of Northamptonshire, 1 ; Ibis, 1891, 174 (H. Saunders) ; R. Gray, Birds of 

 the West of Scotland ; Saxby, Birds of Shetland, 134 ; Field, 1904, ciii. 51 ; Naumann, Vogel 

 Mitteleuropas, iv. 103 ; Borrer, Birds of Sussex ; J. B. Bailly, Ornithologie de la Savoie, 

 ii. 79. 



