VIII 



CARRION CROW 



there is one bird that I should like to see extinct 

 in these islands it is the Carrion Crow. Many 

 a time this bold outlaw has prevented my obtaining 

 good pictures of birds, and after making all pre- 

 paration to photograph certain rare species at their 

 nests, I have discovered that the Crow has ruthlessly destroyed 

 the eggs, or carried them away to its young. I am not an egg 

 collector, nor do I take eggs of any wild birds, with the exception 

 of those laid by the Crow, and whenever I find one of their 

 nests my conscience never pricks me if I destroy the whole 

 thing, for I think that this bird is, without the slightest doubt, 

 the greatest feathered enemy of other birds. 



On three occasions he, during the past two years, has looted 

 Kites' nests in Wales known to me, and I really think, at the 

 present time, the Crow is as big an enemy of the Kite as the 

 collector. At one Kite's nest that I visited last May, I saw a 

 Crow actually sitting on a branch just above the sitting bird, and 

 that same evening, before the robber could be shot, he had taken 

 the three eggs just as the young Kites were leaving their shells I 

 It is a thousand pities that the Kite is such a coward where the 

 Crow is concerned ; but on nearly every visit I have made to a 

 Kite's nest I have observed Crows chasing and worrying the 



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