4328 Birds. 



outwitted by a crow, he bethought him of fastening down near to the 

 coppice a live cat secured to a peg, and watch the crows' approach ; 

 having done this, and placed himself in a convenient ambush, one of 

 the crows espying the cat, and thinking it was there for no friendly 

 purpose, began cawing and hovering over it, and giving the poor ani- 

 mal timely warning that if it did not forthwith decamp, it would very 

 shortly be converted into crows' meat, and its skin probably be made 

 to serve as a lining for the young crows' nest. Poor puss only 

 replied by a few pensive mewings, when the angry crow made a 

 nearer swoop, and thereupon off went the keeper's gun, killing the 

 crow, and relieving the cat from further apprehension. Again was the 

 same plan tried with the other crow, but in vain ; but there being a 

 necessity that the crow should be killed, and necessity being the 

 mother of invention, the keeper having the night before caught seven 

 or eight large rats in his rabbit- traps, placed some of them within 

 sight of the crow, together with a large male ferret, pinned down in 

 the cat's place, thinking that the curious appearance and strange 

 chattering noise of the latter, when it found it could not get at 

 the dead rats, purposely placed a little way off it, would probably 

 attract the crow's attention. This proved successful, and the crow 

 was soon shot, but not before another crow was caught in a steel trap 

 baited with egg-shells, and placed on the top of a cropped hedge close 

 by; and this last crow, supposing the keeper to be really correct 

 in having killed the first he shot at, would then make up two pair of 

 carrion crows which had alone, in the short space of a week or ten 

 days, driven away from their previously long-established and con- 

 stantly occupied rookery, not less than from 150 to 200 rooks, a cir- 

 cumstance which I am not aware has been noticed as occurring 

 before. 



I should add that within a very few days of the last of the crows 

 being destroyed, some few pairs of rooks returned again, and recom- 

 menced building their nests; but this Russian invasion has so depo- 

 pulated the province that there are now only to be seen four or five 

 nests, where before there were fifty or sixty, and it will take a long 

 time probably before the rooks gain sufficient confidence to return as 

 formerly to the ash coppice. 



William Henry Slaney. 



llattjn Hall, April 20, 1854. 



