Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/289

Rh Magpies, with an undoubted nest, kept attacking a Crow that insisted on settling in one of a row of trees—also tall and slender—in which it was placed. Both were equally persevering—the Crow, though often chased away, always returning, and settling generally in the last tree of the row, where he would be left alone sometimes for a minute or two, but before long one of the Magpies flew at him, and put him to flight. The Crow defended itself, but not, it would seem, very successfully, and in the last attack upon him, made, with great spirit, in the air, a large black feather floated to the ground, which I made no doubt was his. Yet this did not drive him from the trees, and it was only on my approaching nearer that he finally left them. Thus we see that both species look upon the approach of the other to within a moderate distance of their nest as an intrusion."

That the Rook suffers persecution from the Carrion-Crow is a well-established fact, and there is reason to believe that it has another dangerous enemy in the Hooded Crow. According to the late Mr Ussher. Choughs will attack both Hooded Crows and Ravens. "I once saw," he says, "two Choughs energetically attacking a pair of Ravens; they shot up into the air and darted down on the latter, whose heavy flight made them helpless against their agile tormentors."

Birds of prey are often hostile to one another. The Merlin is exceptionally pugnacious, and its boldness in attacking intruders is well known.