234 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



gunners, who have occasionally complained of his stealing 

 a wounded wigeon or knot from under their very guns. 



In this neighbourhood he is a most industrious and inde- 

 fatigable scavenger, picking up many unconsidered trifles in 

 the shape of stranded birds, putrid fish, and other carrion. 

 On the warrens he considers dead rabbits his lawful prey, 

 and I have never heard any one dispute his right to them. 

 I reported to the Eastern Daily Press, in November, 1905, 

 the fact that I had discovered him busily employed at the 

 harbour mouth skinning some dead dogfishes, first digging 

 out the eyes, then disembowelling them, and then turning 

 them inside out as expertly as a fish hawker turns out 

 weevers and gurnards for the housewives surrounding his 

 hand-barrow with waiting plates. I finished my note by 

 asking if any reader had ever detected Master Crow skinning 

 a rabbit. The following day a letter appeared signed by 

 "Anopheles," who had known the bird to operate on rats. 

 He wrote : 



" SIR, the thirst of your correspondent, ' John Know- 

 little,' would seem to be insatiable when facts relating 

 to natural history are under discussion. ... I can only 

 answer him indirectly by reference to the treatment of 

 rats. 



" On a frosty December night last year I was one of a 

 party who enjoyed an excellent evening's sport, between 

 nine and eleven, ratting around some corn stacks. As is 

 our custom when on such expeditions for my friends and 

 I often indulge in this sport during the winter months we 

 were armed with sticks, bicycle-lamps, and a couple of keen 

 dogs, the sticks to stir the rats out of the stacks, and the 

 lamps to keep them in view of the dogs after they have 

 jumped down on to the ground. Our kill on this occasion 

 numbered between twenty and thirty rats, and these were 

 left on the ground around the stacks, About three days 

 afterwards I was walking past these same stacks and was 

 surprised to find some score or more 'hoodies' busily engaged 

 on the ground I say surprised, because the Danish crow is 

 not very common in the district referred to, about ten miles 

 from Norwich. The object of their search was soon apparent, 

 for I found, with the exception of their skins, little remained 

 of our rats of the previous evening. They were lying on 

 the ground as we had left them, beautifully cleaned, though 

 turned inside out, but the skins otherwise uninjured ; and it 

 was evident, from some of the carcase still remaining, that 



