HOODED CROW. 
9 
rious, associating in large colonies ; but I observed, when 
once in Scotland, that there you never see more than a 
pair at a time, and that not often : you may walk for days 
without meeting with this bird at all. 
In severe winters, the Hooded Crow is common 
enough all up the valley of the Wey. The common 
between Godalming and Guildford is a favourite resort 
with him ; and you can hardly pass along this way without 
seeing several. They stay in the road in the most fearless 
manner, till the horses of a coach are within twenty yards 
of them, and, on being disturbed, take a short cu'cuit, and 
settle again almost on the spot they rose from. The arri- 
val of this crow from the north takes place in October and 
November, and liis return in March. I know no instance 
of his breeding here, or ever being seen here in summer. 
In the winter of 1813-14, these crows, as well as the 
common crow and lots of ringdoves, used to come into our 
garden, to eat the leaves of the greens ; and so severely 
did they punish the whole of the cabbage and brocoli 
tribes, that we got nothing at all from the stumps, when 
the warm weather ought to have set them sprouting. The 
tops of the plants were pecked into shreds, and stuck up 
like a parcel of brushes ; and so remained. But the most 
remarkable feature of that terrible winter — as regards 
birds — was the number of skylarks that it actually starved 
to death. They wandered about in flocks, from field to 
field, from garden to garden, till they became mere bags 
of bones, and sometimes of a morning you might find them 
frozen to the surface of the ground : and when we drove 
up the survivors, in the garden or the field, how forlorn 
was their look, how weak their flight, how woe-begone 
their voice, how different in all respects from the happy 
