Habits of the Crow. 129 



able that hawks, jays, magpies, crows, nearly all birds 

 of prey, seem to remain in pairs the entire year — and 

 when they have once tasted a member of a brood, be 

 it pheasant, partridge, or chicken, they stay till they 

 have cleared off the lot. Slow of flight and somewhat 

 lazy of habit, they will perch for hours on a low tree, 

 croaking and pruning their feathers ; they peer into 

 every nook and corner of the woodlands, not like the 

 swift hawk, who circles over and is gone and in a few 

 minutes is a mile away. So that neither the mouse 

 in the furrow nor the timid partridge cowering in the 

 hedge can escape their leering eyes. 



Therefore the keeper smites them hip and thigh 

 whenever he finds them ; and if he comes across the 

 nest, placed on the broad top of a pollard-tree — not in 

 the branches, but on the trunk — sends his shot through 

 it to smash the eggs. For if the young birds come to 

 maturity they will remain in that immediate locality 

 for months, working every hedge and copse and ditch 

 with cruel pertinacity. In consequence of this unceas- 

 ing destruction the crow has become much rarer of 

 late, and its nest is hardly to be found in many woods. 

 They breed in the scattered trees of the meadows and 

 fields, especially where no regular game preservation 

 is attempted, and where no keeper goes his rounds. 

 Even to this day a lingering superstition associates 



K 



