Carrion Crows.
The carrion crow is about the most alert bird there is. To take him unawares requires stealth and cunning and, even when surprised, he seems to have something of the owl's soft and silent departure. He can put himself twenty feet in the air without a sound and no more than two or three beats of his black wings. Many times I have gone through the undergrowth among the larches to discover the birds at the nest—a second laying, I think—and each time they have seen me first. It amuses me to see how they come back and turn above the spot, keeping more than a gunshot up, although I have no gun with me. A magpie that seems to favour a patch of ground among the gorse has an even more uncanny knowledge of my presence, and leaves so quickly and with such a trick of evasive fight that I wonder if he ever did flip up and round the thornbush. Both of these birds have countless generations of cunning behind them. Because of the nature of their food they can only survive by keeping a wary eye open as they pick and scavenge on the ground.
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