DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE CARRION-CROW. abl 
are off and out of sight, but I hear not far off that curious more 
human-sounding note that I have remarked in another pair of 
birds, and which I suppose (for the present) to be confined to 
the male. After staying till a little after 6, I left, and had 
hardly got out from under my bush when I saw both the birds 
still sitting where they had been before. They must have come 
back silently from another direction, so that I missed them, but 
not long ago. They now seemed settled to roost, and when I 
passed along the road, at nearly 7, the tall fir visible from it 
stood sad and solitary. Had they suspected my presence? I 
do not think so; I was too well hidden. I recall that other 
instance when one of another pair, though having a beakful of 
dried grass or other material, flew down and fed over the land, 
where he was joined by the other, and both came so near me as 
to make me feel that they had no idea of my whereabouts. I 
have also at various other times seen a Crow thus fly and perch 
with a stick in its bill, and it subsequently transpired that I was 
nowhere near its nesting-tree. This tardiness in bringing the 
gathered materials is a normal trait, therefore—to be observed 
in other birds also—and need not be attributed to fear or 
suspicion. It may result from a conflict between different 
impulses—as, for instance, hunger and the nest-building one— 
for in both the previous instances the birds laid down what they 
were bringing and began to feed over the Jand; and so, too, it 
may have been in this ease, for there was a little time for supper 
_ before bed. Thus, bit by bit, we get at their daily round. 
May 4th.—I1 was unsuccessful in trying to watch the birds 
building this afternoon. They went off—one carrying a stick— 
on my entering the little ‘‘shore’’ or dingle where the nest is 
situated, and, though I waited under my hazel-bush till con- 
siderably past 5 (from 3.20 p.m.), they did not come to the tree 
again, but only, towards the last, into the neighbourhood, 
though I believe they had then forgotten all about me. After I 
had left my place—towards 6—they went down apparently to 
feed over some potato-planted land, but I did not see them hack 
at the plants or pull them up. Then they both flew to the nest 
—one having a stick which it must have got since its return— 
but the building was not continued, and I left them, still on the 
land, about 6.30. Before coming to the nest these Crows had 
