FOR NORTHERN INDIA 109 



no fine feathers, hence the cocks do not 

 " display " before the hens. To sing they 

 know not how. Their courtship, therefore, 

 provides a feast for neither the eye nor the ear 

 of man. The lack of ornaments and voice 

 perhaps explains the fact that among crows 

 there is no noisy love-making. Crows make a 

 virtue of necessity. Any attempt at courtship 

 after the style of the costermonger is resented 

 by the whole corvine community. The only 

 amorous display permitted in public is head- 

 tickling. The cock and the hen perch side by 

 side, one rufEes the feathers of the neck, the 

 other inserts its bill between the ruffled 

 feathers of its companion and gently tickles 

 its neck, to the accompaniment of soft gurgles. 

 Crows are the most intelligent of birds. 

 Like the other fowls of the air in which the 

 brain is well developed, they build rough 

 untidy nests mere platforms placed in the 

 fork of a branch of almost any kind of tree. 

 The usual materials used in nest-construction 

 are twigs, but crows do not limit themselves 

 to these. They seem to take a positive pride 

 in pressing into service materials of an un- 

 common nature. Cases are on record of nests 

 composed entirely of spectacle-frames, wires 



