728 
BIRD-LIFE. 
carriage, holding his head on one side with a reflective 
air. Arrived at the carcase, he halts, makes a mental 
estimate of it, and, looking cautiously about him, 
takes a bite, but immediately looks up again, listening 
on all sides; he acts in this manner continually during 
the whole meal. After his appetite is satiated, he takes 
a comfortable, though cautious, rest; he then cleans his 
beak, preens his feathers, and struts up and down; at 
the slightest alarm he immediately takes wing. 
When engaged in hunting, his movements are quicker. 
Like a bird of prey, he dashes suddenly down upon small 
mammals, or indeed those of middling size, if sick or 
helpless, and belabours them with his sharp beak, making 
the fur fly in all directions. If the prey he pursues fakes 
to flight, he arrests its progress by attacking the head, 
thus obliging it to turn about. In this manner he will, 
by degrees, worry to death quadrupeds of comparatively 
large size. He will cut fish out of the ice, or capture 
them alive when in shallow water; he runs after lizards, 
and kills them by striking them on the head with his 
beak, while he smashes shell-fish on the rocks, as we 
have before described. 
During the breeding season, whilst the young are 
small, and even when they are already half grown, they 
require a large amount of food, a demand which calls for 
great exertion on the part of the old birds. The Raven 
is, next to the Crossbill, the earliest breeder that we 
have. The pair commence toying, as before mentioned, 
already in the month of February, the male ogling his 
partner, and courting her with a low “klak, lak, lak, 
leek,” or “kluk, kluk,” and “ kourr,” or carries on a 
really continuous and varied coaxing conversation, to 
which declaration of ardent affection she replies to the 
