At Home with Wild Nature 



side-slip from the path of virtue, and when wire worms, 

 leather-jackets, and other noxious grubs are hard to 

 find will take to robbing other birds of their eggs and 

 the murdering of their young. 



Poetic justice occasionally overtakes wrongdoers in 

 the feathered world. Some years ago starlings evicted 

 a number of house sparrows from their untidy nests 

 built in a row of Scots firs growing in front of a Hert- 

 fordshire farmhouse and took possession. One evening 

 whilst passing the place I became aware of a great 

 commotion, and to my astonishment discovered several 

 rooks engaged in the nefarious task of hauling feather- 

 less baby starlings out of the old sparrows' nests and 

 carrying them away. The harsh, protesting cries of the 

 much-wronged parent birds and the showers of straws 

 and feathers that floated quietly to the ground as the 

 old nests were ruthlessly torn to pieces by the ruffianly 

 robbers made an indelible impression on my mind. 



In the very severe and prolonged winter of 1895 

 rooks took to the killing and eating of weak, half- 

 starved starlings, arid for two or three years afterwards 

 attempted to perpetuate the habit. 



The jackdaw and the magpie are both guilty of 

 robbing small birds of their eggs and young. I have 

 known a few individuals of the latter species dispatch a 

 wounded partridge and pick its bones absolutely bare 

 in an incredibly short space of time. 



The gaily coloured, inquisitive jay is a stealthy thief, 

 always anxious to learn the business of its neighbours 

 but not very desirous that anybody should know much 



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