8 THE BIRDS OF CALCUTTA. 



other creatures, from men to lizards. I have heard of 

 a Crow watching one of those reptiles lajiag and 

 eating up the eggs one by one ! He is indeed a 

 terrible pest to an3^hing that is weak and helpless, 

 though he often meets his match in a most unexpect- 

 ed way. I have seen him soundly beaten by the little 

 spotted dove — about the last adversary one would 

 expect him to fear — ^but a bad conscience no doubt 

 makes him a coward. 



What are his relations to the Jungle-crow {Corvus 

 macrorhynchus) I do not know. Every now and 

 then one hears, even in Calcutta, the provincial 

 accents of this Mofussilite, and catches sight of him, 

 easily distinguishable from the urban bird by his 

 greater size and entirely black plumage. Is the 

 smaller bird the master — ^not an unknown case among 

 allied species — or is the size of the Jungle-crow a 

 disadvantage to him when Qjing amongst buildings ? 

 At any rate, one has to get some distance away from 

 Calcutta before one finds the big black Crow at all 

 common. Yet he has a very wide range, from Gilgit 

 where he meets the true raven with which he is 

 sometimes confounded, to Siam and Singapore ; and 

 he is also the Crow of the Andamans, so that he must 

 possess considerable powers of adapting himself to 

 circumstances. But, from the fact that the Hima- 

 layan birds are the smallest and those from the 



