122 THE CROWS. 



hollow, the shape of a finger bowl, lined with coir, or 

 with horse-hair stolen from a mattress, or with what- 

 ever material can be had, not excepting brass wire 

 from old sodawater bottles ; for in Bombay the Crow 

 population has multiplied to such an extent of late 

 years that the competition for nesting materials has 

 become terrible. In Marine Lines, as the season 

 advances, the Crows patrol the road, or the garden- 

 walks, waiting for sticks to fall, or they get up into 

 the trees and tug at twigs which are still green and 

 will not come off. It is not many years since a pair 

 living in the Fort discovered a real El Dorado in an 

 Optician's shop. They worked that mine so 

 stealthily and cleverly that before they were discovered 

 they had succeeded in abstracting about Rs. 400 

 worth of spectacle frames, which they had worked up 

 into a very superior nest, combining durability and 

 lightness like a " helical tube." The museum of the 

 Bombay Natural History Society contains a ponderous 

 nest made entirely of iron wire, taken apparently 

 from the ruins of railway fences. There are generally 

 four eggs, of a dull bluish-green colour, blotched 

 with brown. They are laid in May, so that, if all 

 goes well, the youngsters will have arrived at the 

 most expensive age just when the monsoon comes, 

 bringing frogs and all manner of plunder. But if all 

 does not go well the mother and her naked infants 

 stand a chance of being washed out of bed together 

 some stormy night. In Canara the Crows will not 

 risk this, and have their nests at the end of the 

 monsoon. The eggs of the Black Crow are some- 

 what larger than those of the common kind, and its 

 nest is usually made earlier in the season. 



