1 86 Wild Life in Wales 



open to guard against surprise by " Sandy " or " Mr 

 Jones " ! 



On the moors immediately round Llanuwchllyn, Crows 

 are well looked after, and have but a sorry time of it ; but 

 they are numerous in many adjoining districts, and the 

 places of those trapped, or shot here, are soon taken by 

 others. As I was passing one place, not many miles away, 

 one day, I stopped on the road to look at a man busy feed- 

 ing his young pheasants, of which there were, I suppose, 

 upwards of twenty coops in the field. It may perhaps have 

 been a coincidence that so many Crows happened to be 

 present together, and it might suggest exaggeration were I 

 to mention the exact number actually in sight at one time, 

 so I will content myself with the modest assertion that 

 more than two pairs of Corbies were mobbing a female 

 Sparrow Hawk in the trees bordering the field, while a 

 dozen Jackdaws were sitting about the coops ! Yet that 

 same keeper had proudly nailed to his rail a Buzzard and 

 several young Ravens, to acquire which, ere the arduous 

 duties of pheasant rearing claimed his attention, had cost 

 him more than one long tramp over the mountain ! A 

 Scotchman, living on a neighbouring estate, and who knew 

 too well, from his own experience, the shortcomings of his 

 brother across the boundary, fairly tingled with indignation 

 when I related my tale to him a few days later. And, what 

 was perhaps more to the purpose, he made a raid over the 

 march very early one morning, and returned triumphant, 

 and partly mollified, with nine young Crows in his bag, to 

 decorate his rail, the produce of two nests in a wooded 

 dingle, several miles beyond the confines of his ground, and 

 where he had, of course, as little business to be found as 

 his victims. 



The persecution the Crow meets with in game preserving 

 districts has had the curious effect of driving it for protection 

 to some of the most thickly populated parts of the country. 

 Even in some of the London parks it is not unknown (and 

 it could, of course, scarcely choose a safer nesting place), and 

 I have seen its nests in the villa gardens of several other 

 large towns. In such places Rooks and Crows are often 



