they will not build their nests upon trees
from which the bark has been peeled to mark
them to be felled. But the explanation is very
simple. Decaying trees become less and less
elastic and more and more brittle, their topmost
branches afford the birds less and less security
for the safety of their nests. When choosing
twigs to build their nests with they reject dead
and brittle ones, and select the freshest and
supplest they can tear off from vigorous trees.
The insecurity of the brittle and rotten branches
when proved by the winds, is to the rooks an
intelligible enough notice to quit, or to avoid,
without its being at all necessary to suppose that
they can read a sign so arbitrary as the felling
mark of the woodman.

The boldness and the wildness of this group
of birds seem dependent chiefly on the treatment
they experience from man, making them
either familiar or wary. The hooded crow of
Ceylon (C. splendens), for example, is described
as equally audacious and fearful; audacious,
because the natives rarely disturb him; and
fearful, because he has seen his kindred
murdered by the white man's gun. British rooks
building near churches, mansions, or in cities,
being but rarely fired at, I have pretended
to fire at them with my stick, without in the
least disturbing them, either in their rookeries
or in the fields. The Ceylon hoodies, like the
British rooks, build near public buildings. Near
the Government House there is a rookery or
hoodery in some hibiscus trees, a species of
mallow, yielding useful fibres, such as sunhemp.
These crows are rarely or never seen far from
town; and in town they are most audacious.
Mr. E. L. Layard says, if you leave your
breakfast-table with the window open but for a
single moment, on returning to it the rustle of
his wings as he is flying off, the marks of his feet
upon your white tablecloth, and the gashes of
his beak in your pat of butter, prove the rapacity
and the nimbleness of the marauder. As for
the poor woman who bakes and sells cakes,
called hopper or oppah, this crow is the plague of
her life. He patiently watches her proceedings
until the cake is cooked and laid in her open
basket ready to be sold, or stolen. And then, if
she chances but to look aside, a crow may be
seen dropping softly down from the roof of her
hut, and snatching the cake put of her basket.
And woe befalls her if she gives chase. For a
flock of hoodies may then seize the opportunity
of ransacking her cottage, robbing her dried fish,
scattering her rice, upsetting her chilli, and
smashing her glass and crockery. Mr. Layard
has seen his boy's hand bleeding from the bite
of a crow, which tried to snatch his buttered
bread out of it; and yet if but a stick is pointed
at one of these bold thieves, away it flies for two
or three hundred yards, screeching the alarm to
the whole rookery.

"What a brave soldier the raven is!" said an
old Highlander once to Mr. Macgillivray; "he
fights the eagle, who is four times his size."
"But let us consider the matter," says this
zealous ornithologist. "There goes the white-tailed
eagle! Launched from the rock of Liuir
she advances along the cliffs on her way to the
inland hills, where she expects to find a supply
of food for her young. Now she is opposite the
promontory of Ui, whence, croaking in fierce
anger, rush two ravens. The eagle seems not
to heed them; but they rapidly gain upon her,
and separating as they come up in her wake,
one ascends and the other glides beneath, menacing
her and attempting to peck her. While she
regards the one below, that above plunges
towards her, the other in the mean time threatening
vengeance below. But there seems to be
more pestering than fighting in the attack.

The truth is, that several species of birds
besides the skuas are garotters; and garotting is
always, among birds as among men, a cowardly
and rascally business. The white-headed eagle,
the representative, of the United States of
America, was objected to by Benjamin Franklin
because he is what is now called a garotter.
Franklin wished some nobler bird to be selected
than this bird of bad character, which does not
get his living honestly, and is, besides, a rank
coward, whom the little king-bird, not bigger
than a sparrow, attacks boldly, and drives out of
the district. Alexander Wilson has graphically
described how the white-headed eagle garottes
the fish-hawk, a kind of osprey. From some
gigantic tree he surveys the shore and ocean,
and seems calmly contemplating the snow-white
gulls slowly winnowing the air; the busy sand-
pipers (tringæ) coursing along the sands; trains
of ducks streaming over the surface; silent and
watchful cranes intent and wading; and
clamorous crows. High over all these hovers
the fish-hawk, whose wide curvature of wing
and sudden suspension in the air, shows that he
is settling over some devoted victim of the deep.
His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing
himself with half-opened wing, the eagle watches
the result. Down darts the osprey, the roar of
his wings reaching the ear as he disappears and
makes the foam surge around. When the fish-
hawk emerges struggling with his prey and
mounts into the air with screams of exultation,
the American eagle gives chase, and soon gains
on the fish-hawk. Each strains his utmost to
mount above the other, displaying the most
elegant and sublime evolutions, until the
unencumbered eagle is just on the point of reaching
his opponent, when, with a sudden scream,
probably of despair and honest execration, the
latter drops his fish; the eagle, poising himself
for a moment as if to take more certain aim,
descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp
ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten
booty silently away to the woods.

The white-headed eagle thus garottes the
osprey as the skua garottes the gull, and Mr.
Thomas Edward, of Banff, once saw a corby and
two hoodies garotting a heron. Early in the
summer of 1845 he was loitering in the hills of
Boyndie, when he saw a heron laden with
provisions for his family flying heavily homewards
from the sea, pursued by three crows and a
brace of magpies. Mr. Edward concealed