THECARRIONCROW.
This bird is well known, and in country places will do prodigious mischief, by destroying young rabbits, chickens and ducks, and likewise in sucking eggs, which the hens and ducks lay in the back yards or in the hedges: these the Crows will break and eat as greedily as any other vermin whatever. Now if you find they have any haunts about your house, get a steel trap, of the same kind as you use for other winged vermin; set it in the ground, quite level with the surface, and cover itwith moss; then take a little piece of bush or some fern, stick some of it down, by one jaw quite low, and bring it round to the other jaw, [see plate VI. fig. 1.] put the bait, whether it be an egg, or rat, a piece of rabbit, or the guts of the same, or any thing else of this sort, in the back part, on the tail of the trap; and when you have put the little fence, before described all around, as a guide for him, he must of necessity go over the trap for the bait, and be caught; but I have been plagued with these as much as I have been with the Ravens, by being obliged to move the trap after every Crow I had taken; but by observing when one is caught, which you may easily hear, for they then make a great noise and keep flying round their imprisoned brother, almost close to the ground, you may then probably get a shoot, and kill some of them; but sometimes I have known them so shy that I could not get them to the trap at any rate. In this case you must observe the places where they most frequent, and take a cat, or a ferret, and tie it to a stake; then take a gun, and hide yourself, when the first Crow that sees the cat or ferret will make a terrible screaming noise, and bring many more, who scream and hover about till you have a fair shoot. In this manner I have had, sometimes, three or four shoots before they dispersed, and killed several of them; for when they see any kind of animal they are not used to, in the day-time, it greatly attracts their attention, and they wonder at it, as the small birds do at the sight of an owl by day-light; and this is the best way to get at the shy ones. I have seen the Crows pick out the eyes of a weak lamb, while alive, in the same manner as the ravens will.
_Fig. 2._ The FOX TRAP struck
The CUBE for WINGED VERMIN _Fig. 1._