138 BIRD WATCHING 



alighted beside it in a manner which seemed to 

 express an entry into its feelings. This was in 

 East Anglia, on the last day but one of February, 

 and I look upon it as a premature breaking out 

 of the nuptial activities before the birds had taken 

 wing to their more northerly breeding-places. As 

 to these aerial antics of the ravens, I doubt if they 

 were strictly nuptial, on account of their performance 

 of them whilst skirmishing with gulls, or with the 

 hooded crow. 



These two ravens were most devoted guardians of 

 their young, and they pursued a plan with me — for 

 I was the only intruder on their island — which was 

 well calculated to blind me with regard to their 

 whereabouts, and would certainly have succeeded in 

 doing so, had not the nest been so openly situated, 

 and such a conspicuous object. They took up their 

 station daily — and in this they never once varied — at 

 a point on the cliffs considerably beyond the place 

 where they had built their nest, and which commanded 

 a wide outlook. As I came each morning along the 

 coast, which rose gradually, I became visible to them 

 whilst about as far from their nest on the one side 

 as they were on the other, and the instant my head 

 appeared over the brow of the hill they rose together 

 with the croaking clamour I have menftoned, and 

 circled about round their own promontory. This 

 strategy could hardly have been improved upon had 

 it been carefully thought out by a man, for in the 

 first place my attention was at once directed to the 

 birds themselves, and then if the likelihood merely of 

 there being a nest had occurred to me, that part of 

 the cliffs from which they rose, and about which they 



