431 Birds. 



the same instinct to haunt the shores of our country during the win- 

 ter months. It can hardly be attributed to any innate dislike of each 

 other or natural hostility. The many well-authenticated instances 

 which are on record of the hooded crow having paired with the car- 

 rion crow in a wild state, w T ould refute such an idea.* Perhaps the 

 different character and aspect of the country, in the immediate vici- 

 nity of the coast, to the east, and to the west, may afford a clew to 

 unravel the mystery. 



To the eastward near Brighton, and for many miles in that direc- 

 tion, the naked downs approach the coast, the country is generally 

 open, and presents a considerable extent resembling (at least in the 

 absence of wood) the native haunts of the hooded crow in the north 

 of Scotland and Denmark. A natural predilection in favor of such a 

 country may therefore induce these birds to prefer the neighbourhood 

 of this treeless tract to the wooded and highly cultivated district which 

 extends to the very shore in the more western part of Sussex ; and 

 admitting, for a moment, this conjecture to be correct, a similar course 

 of reasoning would account for the partiality of the carrion crow for 

 the latter country. 



I should have observed that the carrion crow, even where it occurs 

 in the greatest numbers during the winter months, as at the mouth of 

 Pagham harbour, and the inlets of the sea to the south of Chichester, 

 seems always more or less to live in pairs, both when feeding and when 

 on the wing, and never assembles in large flocks, as the hooded crow 

 is well known to do in the immediate neighbourhood of Brighton, 

 and even on the beach between the houses and the sea. 



The food of both these Corvidae at this season of the year consists 

 of oysters, muscles, small crabs, marine insects, worms, and dead fish 

 which are cast up by the waves during the prevalent south-westerly 

 storms. At Pagham, in the vicinity of the oyster beds, the carrion 

 crow has frequently been observed to ascend to a great height in the 

 air with one of these fish in his claws, and after letting it fall on the 

 beach to descend rapidly with closed pinions, and devour the contents, 

 which, but for the shock or fracture occasioned by the fall, he would 

 have been unable to disengage from the shell. I do not know an in- 

 stance of the hooded crow's having ever been observed to resort to a 

 similar expedient. 



The hooded crows make their appearance about the beginning of 

 October, haunting the upper parts of the tide rivers at Shoreham and 



* Vide Yarrell's ' History of British Birds,' vol. ii. p 86 



