In India Those Birds Have Been Labeled “Shreds of Satan.”
    Travelers in the orient have much to say about the Indian crow, a bird that for uncanny knowingness and prankish audacity has perhaps no equal. Corvus splendens-thus have ornithologists flatteringly labeled him. But a naturalist who knows the Indian crows at first hand has called them “shreds of Satan, cinders from Tartarus.” To give these impish creatures their due, however, it should be said that life in India is not a little enlivened by their presence. A correspondent witnessed the following in incident.
    A small hawk had seized a little bird and perched on a leafless branch to devour his prey. The spectable drew two crows to the spot. They hopped and flapped from branch to branch, noisily discussing the strategy of their intended raid.
    Then one of them quietly slipped away from the surrounding follage. At the same time his mate flew in front of the perching hawk and hovering within a foot of his beak, maintaining a bustling menace of snatching the tidbit. That effectively compelled the attention of the hawk. His prey firmly grasped beneath his feet, he angrily hissed and lunged at the hovering nuisance. So lively was the skirmish that the human onlooker forgot the existence of the second crow. But now that wily bird reappeared some distance in the rear of his destined victim. With stealthy sidings and short noiseless flights, he drew near. Then he made a swift dash, seized the hawk’s long, barred tail by the tip, hung on it with his full weight and toppled the luckless hawk in a complete back somersault from the branch! The released tidbit was instantly seized by the first crow, and the clever pair bore off their booty with much triumphant cawing.-Youth’s Companion.
Post a Comment