Birds in London

by W. H. Hudson

The crow! the crow! the great black crow!
He lives for a hundred years and mo’;
He lives till he dies, and he dies as slow
As the morning mists down the hill that go.
Go—go! you great black crow!
But it’s fine to live and die like a great black crow.

Many persons might be inclined to think that it must be better for the crow to have his nest a little way out of the hurly-burly, or at all events within easy reach of the country; for how, they might ask, can this large flesh-eating, voracious creature feed himself and rear a nest full of young with cormorant appetites in London?

Eliza Cook, whose now universally neglected works I admired as a boy, makes the bird say, in her ‘Song of the Crow’:—

I plunged my beak in the marbling cheek,
I perched on the clammy brow;
And a dainty treat was that fresh meat
To the greedy carrion crow.

The unknown author of ‘The Twa Corbies’ was a better naturalist as well as a better poet when he wrote—

I’ll pick out his bonny blue een.

But this relates to a time when the bodies of dead men, as well as of other large animals, were left lying promiscuously about; in these ultra-civilised days, when all dead things are quickly and decently interred, the greedy carrion crow has greatly modified his feeding habits. In London, as in most places, he takes whatever he finds on the table, and though not in principle a vegetarian, there is no doubt that he feeds largely on vegetable substances. Like the sparrow and other London birds, he has become with us a great bread-eater.

Mr. Kempshall, the superintendent at Clissold Park, relates a curious story of this civilised taste in the crow. The park for very many years was the home of a pair of these birds. Unfortunately, when this space was opened to the public, in 1889, the birds forsook it, and settled in some large trees on private grounds in the neighbourhood. These trees were cut down about three years ago, whereupon the birds returned to Clissold Park; but they have now again left it. One summer morning before the park was opened, when there were young crows in the nest, Mr. Kempshall observed one of the old birds laboriously making his way across the open ground towards the nesting-tree, laden with a strange-looking object. This was white and round and three times as big as an orange, and the crow, flying close to the ground, was obliged to alight at short intervals, whereupon he would drop his pack and take a rest. Curious to know what he was carrying, the superintendent made a sudden rush at the bird, at a moment when he had set his burden down, and succeeded in getting near enough to see that the white object was the round top part of a cottage loaf. But though the rush had been sudden and unexpected, and accompanied with a startling shout, the crow did not lose his head; striking his powerful beak, or plunging it, as Eliza Cook would have said, into the mass, he flopped up and struggled resolutely on until he reached the nest, to be boisterously welcomed by his hungry family. They had a big meal, but perhaps grumbled a little at so much bread without any ghee.

Probably the London crows get most of their food from the river. Very early every morning, as we have seen, they wing their way to the Thames, and at all hours of the day, when not engaged in breeding, crows may be seen travelling up and down the river, usually in couples, from Barnes and Mortlake and higher up, down to the sea. They search the mud at low tide for dead fishes, garbage, bread, and vegetable matter left by the water. Even when the tide is at its full the birds are still able to pick up something to eat, as they have borrowed the gull’s habit of dropping upon the water to pick up any floating object which may form part of their exceedingly varied dietary. It is amusing to see the carrion crow fishing up his dinner in this way, for he does not venture to fold his wings like the gull and examine and take up the morsel at leisure; he drops upon the water rather awkwardly, wetting his legs and belly, but keeps working his wings until he has secured the floating object, then rises heavily with it in his beak. Another curious habit of some London crows in the south-west district, is to alight, dove-like, on the roofs and chimney-stacks of tall houses.

In an article on this bird which appeared in the ‘Fortnightly Review’ for May 1895, I wrote: ‘It sometimes greatly adds to our knowledge of any wild creature to see it tamed—not confined in any way, nor with its wings clipped, but free to exercise all its faculties and to come and go at will. Some species in this condition are very much more companionable than others, and probably none so readily fall into the domestic life as the various members of the crow family; for they are more intelligent and adaptive, and nearer to the mammalians in their mental character than most birds. It is therefore curious to find that the subject of this paper appears to be little known as a domestic bird, or pet. A caged crow, being next door, so to speak, to a dead and stuffed crow, does not interest me. Yet the crow strikes one as a bird with great possibilities as a pet: one would like to observe him freely associating with the larger unfeathered crows that have a different language, to learn by what means he communicates with them, to sound his depths of amusing devilry, and note the modulations of his voice; for he, too, like other corvines, is loquacious on occasions, and much given to soliloquy. He is also a musician, a fact which is referred to by Æsop, Yarrell, and other authorities, but they have given us no proper description of his song. A friend tells me that he once kept a crow which did not prove a very interesting pet. This was not strange in the circumstances. The bird was an old one, just knocked down with a charge of shot, when he was handed over in a dazed condition to my informant. He recovered from his wounds, but was always a very sedate bird. He had the run of a big old country house, and was one day observed in a crouching attitude pressed tightly into the angle formed by the wall and floor. He had discovered that the place was infested by mice, and was watching a crevice. The instant that a mouse put out a head the crow had him in his beak, and would kill him by striking him with lightning rapidity two or three times on the floor, then swallow him. From that time mouse-catching was this bird’s sole occupation and amusement, and he went about the house in the silent and stealthy manner of a cat.