F. HEATHERLEY : RAVENS AT THE NEST. 237 



flying back and apparently reporting to the female, 

 which sat on a crag commanding a view of the nesting 

 site, and they did not return to the nest until my com- 

 panion had gone away in earnest. But once he had 

 cleared off they returned and fed the young freely, 

 although the disguised camera was only ten feet and the 

 tent about forty feet from the nest. The male several 

 times investigated the camera, showing great annoyance, 

 and, flying to the hiding tent, walked round it croaking 

 angrily. 



The Ravens did not require Earl to go so far away 

 before they would come back to the nesting site, but 

 once there their behaviour was quite different from that of 

 the Hooded Crows. Each step in our procedure — the 

 erection of the hiding tent, the dummy camera, and the 

 real camera — resulted in such scares that, had the 

 young been of a less hardy race or newly hatched, I 

 think they would have starved. 



The female proved bolder than the male, but on the 

 first occasion the young were not fed for twenty-four 

 hours, and on the others they had to scramble out of 

 the nest to be fed, and it was only on such an occasion 

 when the young were squatting in the grass at the foot 

 of the cliff that the male joined in feeding them. 



The bird we took to be the female* was, as in the case 

 of the Hooded Crow, not only more assiduous in feeding, 

 but also, unlike the male, attended to the cleanliness of 

 the nest. But she carried the excrement away in her 

 bill, not pouching it as did the Hooded Crow. Both 

 species are extremely clean in their habits, the nest 

 being scrupulously clean and the young free from 

 vermin. 



The Hoodies fed their young much more frequently, 

 sometimes every two or three minutes, with hardly ever 

 a longer interval than twenty minutes, but they had four 

 young. The Raven, even when apparently at her ease, 



* The hen Raven is easily distinguishable at the nest by her note, 

 which is not nearly so deep as that of the cock. — F. C.R.J. 



