40 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



rule the installation of the boy with the gun in the 

 pastures puts an end to the loss of lambs. 



INEFFECTIVE SCARECROWS. 



But crows, with rooks and jackdaws, belong to a 

 class of birds which have enough independence of 

 thought to make the success of measures adopted 

 against them always a variable quantity. Sometimes 

 a couple of dead hoodie crows hung upon sticks it 

 generally falls to the lot of the hoodies, who are 

 much less wary than the rooks, to supply the east- 

 coast farmers with scarecrows will keep all the 

 marauding tribe of rooks, jackdaws, and crows away 

 from a forty -acre field of seed. At other times, or 

 in other places, you may plant scarecrows of elaborate 

 manufacture all over a small field, and yet the sable 

 marauders will assemble thither for breakfast every 

 morning with cheerful punctuality. Of all the corn- 

 stacks round here there is only one which no measures 

 suffice to protect. At each end of it are hung up 

 dead crow-birds ; and on the sloping sides the farmer, 

 who is a rare stalker of rooks, has flung up the bodies 

 of half a dozen more. Yet at any hour of the day, 

 almost, you may see a dozen rooks and jackdaws 

 tugging straws, with ears attached, out of the sides 

 of the stack, or stripping off its straw thatch. The 

 explanation lies, apparently, in the fact that a clump 

 of trees grows close to the stack, and from their 

 branches the marauders are able to reconnoitre the 

 position carefully. They familiarize themselves with 

 the aspect of the scarecrows and the dead rooks, 

 until at last one bold spirit ventures down, and the 



