90 
THE CARRION CROw/ 
by a set-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. i 
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-t 
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 
