2 THE BIRDS OF CALCUTTA 



mens in a Museum, and is much more conspicuous in the 

 living birds, as specific distinctions most commonly are. 



There is nothing to choose r in the matter of gloss and 

 richness of piumage between the male and female Crows, 

 but the former's bigger head and bill will distinguish him 

 easily if both are seen together : the difference in feature 

 is hardly marked enough to sex any Crow by itself. 

 Young Crows when they leave the nest have light blue 

 eyes and pink mouths, but they do not look innocent on 

 that account rather, with their duller, shabbier plum- 

 age, more blackguardly than their dark-eyed, black- 

 mawed parents ; the old Crow being, if anything, rather 

 blacker inside than out, as far as one can see when he 

 opens his mouth to caw. 



The Crow, unlike the Ethiopian of Scripture, can change 

 his skin, or rather his feathers, for pied, white and dun- 

 coloured specimens are not unknown ; one of the last men- 

 tioned kind lived for more than a dozen years in the 

 Alipore Zoo. The white birds have flesh-coloured legs 

 and beaks, and in the duns the parts that should be grey 

 in the normally-coloured Crow are lighter than the rest. 

 Such ' ' off-coloured ' ' Crows are said to be tabooed by 

 Crow society, but this does not seem to be the case with 

 birds suffering from deformity or disease. I knew for 

 years a Crow residing in or near Sudder Street which 

 suffered from some unsightly and doubtless highly un- 

 pleasant disease of the feet, which makes those members 

 look as if the bird had just been walking in thick mud ; 

 and evidently they were very tender, judging from the 

 gingerly way in which this sufferer walked. Yet I can- 



