90 



THE CARRION CROW. 



by aset-ofF against it in his account of millions of 

 noxious insects destroyed by him. However, in the 

 spring of the year, when he has a nest full of young 

 to provide for, and when those young begin to give 

 him broad hints that their stomachs would like some- 

 thing of a more solid and substantial nature than 

 mere worms and caterpillars, his attention to game 

 and poultry is enough to alarm the stoutest-hearted 

 squire and henwife. These personages have long 

 sworn an eternal enmity to him ; and he now^ in his 

 turn, visits, to their sorrow, the rising hopes of the 

 manor with ominous aspect; and he assaults the 

 broods of the duck-pond, in revenge, as it were, for 

 the many attempts which both squire and henwife 

 have made to rob and strangle him. 



In 1815, I fully satisfied myself of his inordinate 

 partiality for young aquatic poultry. The cook had 

 in her custody a brood of ten ducklings, which had 

 been hatched about a fortnight. Unobserved by any 

 body, I put the old duck and her young ones in a 

 pond, nearly three hundred yards from a high fir 

 tree in which a carrion crow had built its nest : it 

 contained five young ones almost fledged. I took 

 my station on the bridge, about one hundred yards 

 from the tree. Nine times the parent crows flew to 

 the pond, and brought back a duckling each time to 

 their young. I saved a tenth victim by timely in- 

 terference. When a young brood is attacked by an 

 enemy, the old duck does nothing to defend it. In 

 lieu of putting herself betwixt it and danger, as the 

 dunghill fowl would do, she opens her mouth, and 

 shoots obliquely through the water, beating it with 



