I30 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



breast to bits ? Just see here — all crooked and pointed : 

 why, an owl have got a hooked bill like an eagle. It 

 stands to reason as he must be in mischief.' So the poor 

 owls are shot and trapped, and nailed to the side of the 

 shed. 



But upon the crow the full vials of the keeper's wrath 

 are poured, and not without reason. The crow among 

 birds is like the local professional among human poachers : 

 he haunts the place and clears everything — it would be 

 hard to say what comes amiss to him. He is the imper- 

 sonation of murder. His long, stout, pointed beak is a 

 weapon of deadly power, wielded with surprising force by 

 the sinewy neck. From a tiny callow fledgling, fallen out 

 of the thrush's nest, to the partridge or a toothsome young 

 rabbit, it is all one to him. Even the swift leveret is said 

 sometimes to fall a prey, being so buffeted by the sooty 

 wings of the assassin and so blinded by the sharp beak 

 striking at his eyes as to be presently overcome. For the 

 crow has a terrible penchant for the morsel afforded by 

 another's eyes : I have seen the skull of a miserable thrush, 

 from which a crow rose and slowly sailed away, literally 

 split as if by a chisel — doubtless by the blow that destroyed 

 its sight. Birds that are at all diseased or weakly — as 

 whole broods sometimes are in wet unkindly seasons — 

 rabbits touched by the dread parasite that causes the fatal 

 ' rot,' the young pheasant straying from the coop, even the 

 chicken at the lone farmstead, where the bailiff only lives 



