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In their habits they well supply the place of our carrion-crows, magpies, and ravens; a tribe of birds widely distributed over the rest of the world, but entirely absent in South America. In the desert between the rivers Negro and Colorado, numbers constantly attend the line of road to devour the carcasses of the exhausted animals which chance to perish from fatigue and thirst.
Fox that the magpies and carrion-crows which they formerly killed in succession in large numbers near their nests, were all males; and they accounted for this fact by the males being easily killed whilst bringing food to the sitting females.
"I detest a buzzard," I said, aloud. "I thought they were crows," she confessed. "Carrion-crows yes. "'The carrion-crows Sing, Caw! caw! only they don't," I added, my song putting me in good-humor once more. And I glanced askance at the pretty stenographer. "It is a pleasure to be employed by agreeable people," she said, innocently. "Oh, I can be much more agreeable than that," I said.
"Now I will have my revenge," said Carne, "on all who have outraged and plundered me. Crows carrion-crows I will turn them into owls without a nest. Prowling owls, to come blinking even now at the last of my poor relics! Charron, what did that fellow say to old Jerry, the day I tied the dogs up?"
"Nearly well," he answered; "but those cursed carrion-crows are set upon killing me damn their souls!" "We'll hae Leddy Florimel sweirin' awfu' gien ye gang on that gait, my lord," said Malcolm. The marquis laughed feebly. "An' what's mair," Malcolm continued, "I doobt they're some partic'lar aboot the turn o' their phrases up yonner, my lord." The marquis looked at him keenly.
He was followed now by no fewer than seven carrion-crows; big, black, evil-looking birds, who circled in the air behind and above him, swooping sometimes to within twenty or thirty feet of his head, and cawing at him in a half-threatening, half-pleading manner, while their bright, hard eyes watched his eyes avidly, and their shiny beaks opened and shut continually to admit of hoarse cries.
It was not that I had or have any quarrel with the creatures I have named, or would have them other than they are carrion-eaters and scavengers, Nature's balance-keepers and purifiers. The only creatures on earth I loathe and hate are the gourmets, the carrion-crows and foxes of the human kind who devour wheatears and skylarks at their tables.
There is much evidence to show that mutual protection is a necessary condition of the Rook's existence; many cases are on record of rookeries being destroyed by Carrion-Crows, Hooded Crows, and Ravens. For instance, Mr.
A thousand birds of prey, hawks, kites, carrion-crows, and ravens, disturbed from the lodgings which they had just taken up for the evening, rose at the report of the gun, and mingled their hoarse and discordant notes with the echoes which replied to it, and with the roar of the mountain cataracts.
The Indians, as well as the whites, have observed this, for when one of them, who has learned a little English, sees the king, and wishes you to have a proper notion of the bird, he says: "There is the governor of the carrion-crows."
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