66 THE CARRION CROW 



time that most other birds are laying their eggs, and when the 

 lambing season is at its height. Then, too, its habits are most 

 fully developed. Its young are clamorous for food, and will not 

 be satisfied with a little. So the old bird sallies forth to scour the 

 districts least frequented by man, and makes every living thing 

 its prey, provided that by force or cunning it can overpower it. 

 If Grouse are plentiful, it is said that one pair, what with stealing 

 the eggs and carrying off the young, will in a season destroy more 

 of them than the keenest sportsman. It will pounce on the leveret 

 and bear it screaming from the side of its mother. It watches 

 sheep which have strayed from the fold, and mangles the newly- 

 born or weakly lambs, carrying them piece-meal to the young 

 ones at home. If mowers are at work, the wary birds alight 

 on some lofty tree, taking care to keep at a sale distance, and 

 when a nest has been laid bare by the scythe, their incredibly 

 sharp eye discerns the prize which, whether it consist of eggs or 

 callow young, is borne off in triumph. Lest their depredations 

 should be discovered by the accumulation of egg-shells, feathers 

 and bones, which are the natural consequence of these raids, they 

 carefully carry to some distance everything that would tend to 

 betray them, so that one might pass directly beneath the scene of 

 these enormities unsuspicious of the evil existing overhead. Keen 

 as this bird is in pursuit of such delicate fare, he can be, when occa- 

 sion serves, as unclean a feeder as the Vulture, and he can, on the 

 other hand, make a meal off corn. Mr. Knox states that in the 

 Weald of Sussex, where the Raven is common, it resorts to the brooks 

 and ponds, which abound in fresh-water mussels (Anodon), and 

 feeds on them most voraciously, especially after floods, when they 

 lie scattered on the mud. The same author states that in winter it 

 resorts to the sea-shore, and feeds on the oysters, mussels, small 

 crabs, marine insects, worms, and dead fish which are cast up by 

 the waves during the prevalent south-westerly storms. It has been 

 frequently observed, he adds, to ascend to a great height in the 

 air with an oyster in its claws, and after letting it fall on the beach, 

 to descend rapidly with closed pinions and devour the contents. 

 A similar instance of apparent reasoning is recorded of the same bird 

 by Pliny, but with the substitution of walnuts for oysters. 



With such wandering habits, it seems at first sight strange that 

 the phrase ' as the Crow flies ' should be adopted to mark distances 

 in a straight line across the open country ; yet when it is borne in 

 mind how many persons confound the Crow with the Rook, and 

 even talk of the ' Crows in a rookery ', the suggestion will at once 

 occur to the mind that the term owed its origin to its far gentler 

 and more respectable relation, the Rook, whose evening flights 

 from the feeding-ground are among the most familiar sights of the 

 country, and are invariably performed in a line so straight, that 

 if a whole flock could be tracked through the air on any one evening 



