2 1 6 Wild Life in Wales 



at all. Many sportsmen, gamekeepers, and others, especially 

 wild fowlers, I am well aware, hold contrary opinions, but 

 they can seldom adduce any direct evidence to back them, 

 while, though negative testimony is seldom very convincing, 

 numerous experiences, besides those referred to in this 

 chapter, have seemed to me to point strongly in the 

 opposite direction. 1 That, however, is too long a story to 

 go into at present ; the Ravens had gone, and for that day I 

 saw no more of them, though, after the camera was arranged, 

 I waited for several hours. 



Some days of rain and snow then intervened, and before 

 1 got back to my shelter the bones of the sheep had been 

 picked clean. Still, there was plenty of wool and skin 

 about, and for several days I waited for a few hours beside 

 these. Plenty of Ravens were seen, some of them coming 

 very close, and I got a fair snap at a Kestrel one day that 

 settled on a post not many yards away, but nothing better. 

 Then, with the help of a farmer, I got another dead sheep 

 into position there were, unfortunately for him, quite a 

 number of them about at the time, and that day got an 

 excellent "shot" at a Buzzard who came to feed at it. 

 The click of the camera, so close to him, alarmed him, how- 

 ever ; and though he passed over once or twice afterwards, 

 he did not come down again that day. This bait I took 

 the precaution of hanging up in a tree, when I left the 

 place, and so it lasted me for many days, most of them 

 blanks, some of them quite interesting. I generally saw at 

 least one Buzzard, and nearly always a few Ravens, though 

 often they only passed overhead. I was in the habit of 

 creeping into my shelter through a narrow hole, which was 

 then generally closed by a branch and a few fern leaves. 

 On one occasion, when this precaution had been neglected, 

 a Raven came and found me out in the most absurd 

 manner. He appeared so suddenly that I had barely got 

 the camera into position, and had omitted to close the 

 " door," and he was, of all the birds that ever visited me, 



1 The experiments made by Darwin and others, with Condors and other 

 birds, are well known, and have generally told against the possession of 

 "smell "by birds. 



