128 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



wrath are poured, and not without reason. The crow 

 among birds is like the local professional among 

 human poachers : he haunts the place and clears 

 everything — it would be hard to say what comes 

 amiss to him. He is the impersonation of murder. 

 His long, stout, pointed beak is a weapon of deadly 

 power, wielded with surprising force by the sinewy 

 neck. From a tiny callow fledgling, fallen out of the 

 thrush's nest, to the partridge or a toothsome young 

 rabbit, it is all one to him. Even the swift leveret is 

 said sometimes to fall a prey, being so buffeted by 

 the sooty wings of the assassin and so blinded by the 

 sharp beak striking at his eyes as to be presently over- 

 come. For the crow has a terrible penchant for the 

 morsel afforded by another's eyes : I have seen the 

 skull of a miserable thrush, from which a crow rose 

 and slowly sailed away, literally split as if by a 

 chisel — doubtless by the blow that destroyed its 

 sight. Birds that are at all diseased or weakly, as 

 whole broods sometimes are in wet unkindly seasons, 

 rabbits touched by the dread parasite that causes the 

 fatal ' rot,' the young pheasant straying from the coop, 

 even the chicken at the lone farmstead, where the 

 bailiff only lives and is in the fields all day — these are 

 the victims of the crow. 



Crows work almost always in pairs — it is remark- 



