92 The Natural History of British Game Birds 
have known a rook to hunt certain lines of hedgerows for small birds' eggs with 
great regularity. This same bird took a lark's nest situated in the grass five yards 
from my drawing-room window, and came always to my garden before eight o'clock 
every morning until I shot him. Rooks will even kill and carry off young Pheasants. 
The following instance 1 will show: — 
"On June 13th my keeper observed about half-a-dozen rooks engaged amongst the coops 
of young pheasants, and, suspecting their object, drove them off. The next morning, having fed 
and watered the young birds, he went to his cottage, and, looking out about six o'clock, saw a 
strong detachment of rooks from a neighbouring colony in great excitement amongst the coops. 
He ran down, a distance of two hundred yards, as fast as possible, but before he arrived they had 
succeeded in killing, and for the most part carrying off, from forty to fifty birds two or three 
weeks old. As he came amongst them they flew up in all directions, their beaks full of the 
spoil. The dead birds not carried away had all of their heads pulled off, and most of their 
legs and wings torn from the body. I have long known that rooks destroy partridges' nests 
and eat the eggs when short of other food, but have never known a raid of this description. 
I attribute it to the excessive drought, which has so starved the birds by depriving them of 
their natural insect food that they are driven to depredation. It will be necessary to be on 
guard for some time ; bad habits once acquired may last even more than one season. Probably 
the half-dozen rooks first seen amongst the coops tasted two or three, and, finding them eatable, 
brought their friends in numbers the next morning." 
In Scotland, the chief winged enemy of the game preserver is the hooded crow. 
They are relentlessly hunted, but a few manage to escape and nest in the dense fir 
woods in spite of the vigilance of keepers. What one family of hoodies will do is 
instanced by Mr. Ogilvie Grant : ! — 
" I was passing through a Scotch fir plantation forming part of a large estate in the north 
of Scotland, where thousands of pheasants are annually reared and turned down. The planta- 
tion ran along about a hundred feet above the rocky sea-coast, and as we advanced along the 
slippery path, we found several sucked pheasants' eggs, evidently the work of crows ; nor had 
we gone far before we came suddenly upon a whole family of hooded rascals, five young and 
two old birds. In the course of about a quarter of a mile we counted over a hundred empty 
shells, which had evidently been carried to the path and there devoured. How many more 
might have been discovered had we searched it is impossible to say, but we saw ample 
evidence of the wholesale destruction which a family of crows is capable of committing among 
pheasants' eggs." 
Nearly the whole of the Falconidae will prey upon Pheasants ; the common 
buzzard, the goshawk, and the sparrow-hawk being the worst offenders ; although the 
two former are now so rare as to be of no consequence. I have known two instances 
of the tawny owl killing numbers of young Pheasants. One summer our head keeper 
at Murthly reported to me that he had missed many young Pheasants, always in the 
evening. He saw a tawny owl take two on separate occasions. The bird was so cun- 
ning that the keeper could not obtain a shot at it for some time, but at last he killed 
it in the act of carrying off a well-grown chick. He sent me the culprit with its 
victim still embedded in its claws. 
Water-hens will sometimes kill young Pheasants. In the case of the latter I think 
1 Tegetmeier on Pheasants, pp. 69-70. 
2 Game Birds, vol. ii. p. 13. 
