92 
G. HOOPER—NOTES ON BIRDS 
I do not know that gulls are of any special use in the creation, 
excepting that they clear the sea and shore of refuse, which would 
otherwise be objectionable. Ladies have given up the bad habit of 
wearing their wings in their hats, and they are not good to eat; 
but I do think that the gull has personally a better chance of 
material happiness in this world than any other bird or beast. 
His senses of sight, smell, and hearing are all excellent, especially 
his sight, which is marvellous. Throw a bit of biscuit as big as a 
nut into the raging surf in the wake of a large steamer, and the 
attendant gull descends from a considerable height and picks it up 
in an instant. He runs and walks with ease and not ungracefully, 
not waddling like a goose or duck; he swims, buoyant as a cork; 
and his flight is rapid and powerful. He is blest with a never- 
failing appetite, which the inexhaustible stores of the sea afford 
ample opportunity of satisfying. If I had been born a Hindoo, 
and believed in the metempsychosis, I would have prayed Yishnu. 
to translate me, after death, into the body of a gull. 
Last autumn an unhappy rook, riddled with shot, with a broken 
wing and an inj ured leg, honoured me by taking up his abode in 
my garden. I did what I could for him, fed and tended him, and 
to some extent tamed him ; at least he would come to my call for 
his breakfast and supper. His friends and relations were unre¬ 
mitting in their attention ; they came in small flocks every day to 
visit him. A sentimentalist might have assumed that they came 
out of a charitable wish to console him in his unhappy position. 
They did not. Thieves by nature, they came to rob him of his 
meals. Regardless of his crippled condition, they would buffet the 
poor bird, and literally take the bread out of his mouth. Rooks 
are interesting birds to watch, and I observed one fact in con¬ 
nection with them which I have never seen recorded, viz. that the 
old birds feed their young, at least occasionally, through the whole 
winter—indeed, up to February, when they begin nesting again. 
I have watched pertinacious young birds following their mothers 
and bullying them until they have transferred the coveted morsel 
from their own to their offsprings’ gaping beaks. 
A raven was recorded as being shot on the borders of this county 
in January. I have no doubt but that it was an escaped tame one, 
for the bird is now almost extinct. The raven is the head of 
the crow family : he has all the bad qualities of the carrion crow, 
intensified by his greater size and strength. He not only steals 
eggs, and devours young birds, but will peck the eyes out of a 
sickly sheep, or murder a weakly lamb. His hoarse cry and 
savage aspect, as well as his evil deeds, have always caused him to 
be considered a bird of ill omen—the “fatal raven” Shakespeare 
calls him. In one of Gay’s ‘ Fables,’ the old woman riding to 
market, her panniers laden with eggs and butter, exclaims :— 
“ Yon raven on the left-hand oak, 
Curse on his ill-betiding croak ! 
Bodes me no good ! ” 
And forthwith the old mare stumbles, falls, and bestrews the road 
