THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 331 



as fresh as if but just dead, may be found stranded on the 

 shore. Neither fisherfolk nor landfolk in East Anglia seem 

 to care for him, though he is attractive to the eye, with 

 cuirass-like scales adorning his lateral line, and with his 

 great bright eyes. But the hooded crow does not despise 

 him. Planting a big black foot upon the stranded fish, he 

 gouges out first one eye, and then the other, and as deftly 

 disembowels it. A few pieces are snatched from the back, 

 when a fellow-bird calls to its companion. Away flies the 

 crow to help a comrade who has just discovered a cast up 

 baby porpoise, another derelict from the fishers' nets. At 

 times the crows find food in plenty, for nature is cruel as 

 well as kindly, and the bird is by no means dainty. When 

 the night has been boisterous, and poor little migrants have 

 been beaten into the sea, next morning's tide, or a tide or 

 two after, sees their carcases flung on the sands : larks, 

 blackbirds, thrushes, linnets and many others, may be among 

 them. Even rooks so perish. It is quite a common thing 

 in late autumn to find the breast bones of various birds 

 clean picked a few hours after some sea-storm. One has 

 found the gull and the gannet, and many a guillemot, 

 razorbill, and little auk's skeleton entirely fleshless, with 

 perhaps only the wings intact, and when they are hard 

 pressed by hunger the crows have been again at these sorry 

 remnants, striping off the tougher muscles of the wings that 

 they had rejected. At a pinch the candle ends and dead 

 rats and mice from the sewers are greedily devoured, nor 

 will the hungry tribe despise a stranded turnip or a broken 

 cocoanut, soft and putrid though they be by long sub- 

 mersion. 



When the east wind long continues, and the sea-fishes 

 leave the shallows for deeper waters, the commoner auks, 

 the guillemot and razorbill, fare badly. These birds revel in 



z 



