1908-1909.] '^ The Raven Wys." 153 



smaller Passerine birds, like the Song Thrush, complete the 

 whole nesting business in less than a month, may be surprised 

 that we waited so long. You forget — or you do not know — 

 you will find the information in none of the " bird-books " — 

 that the Crows appear to differ remarkably from most other 

 Passerine birds which build open nests, in the comparative 

 time spent by the young in the nest. Fourteen days for 

 incubation and fourteen days for fledging are the approximate 

 periods of the Song Thrush ; this may be considered fairly 

 representative of the proportion which the first period bears 

 to the second, and indicates that they are almost equal — 

 although remember that I am generalising from very meagre 

 data and can dogmatise with regard to only about a dozen 

 species all told. The Eook, on the other hand, after requiring 

 some seventeen days for incubation in the egg, spends no less 

 than twenty-seven to thirty days in the nest, making the 

 whole nesting period total out to something under seven 

 weeks, as those of you who have a hankering after first-hand 

 information can by repeated visits to a Eook's " windy cradle " 

 discover for yourselves. The Carrion Crow, as the very 

 careful observations of my friend Mr S. E. Brock discovered 

 last year, takes fully a week more, and all our experience of 

 Eavens, intermittent and disjointed as our city residence had 

 compelled it to be, had taught us that the biggest and most 

 highly developed of all the Corvidae and, according to a high 

 authority, the most highly developed of the whole sub- 

 kingdom of the Carinatse, took not less, but probably a week 

 longer, than its smaller and commoner congener. 



Eight weeks we were confident was well within the mark, 

 and when the time was ripe we put the prospects — young 

 Eavens, cliff difficulties, a glorious day on the hills — to 

 C, found him willing and eager, ready to forego a dozen 

 important engagements, and on 21st May hied north in a body 

 laden with apparatus and a hundred feet of rope to our base 

 of operations. It drizzled rain all evening, and perhaps we 

 ought to have been downcast. We went out on the moors and 

 discovered a Eedshank's and half-a-dozen Lapwings' nests, and 

 became living embodiments of optimism. Our optimism was 

 justified — the morning dawned gloriously. It was a morning, 

 in Henley's great phrase, to " lift the blood " — breezy, cloudy. 



