It Was A Hot, Windless Day, And
The Bird Was By Himself Among The Tall Flowering Grasses And
Buttercups Of The Meadow - A Queer Gaunt Unfinished
Hobbledehoy-Looking Fowl With A Head Much Too Big For His
Body, A Beak That Resembled A Huge Nose, And A Very Monstrous
Mouth.
When I first noticed him he was amusing himself by
picking off the small insects from the flowers with his big
beak, a most unsuitable instrument, one would imagine, for so
delicate a task.
At the same time he was hungering for more
substantial fare, and every time a rook flew by over him on
its way to or from a neighbouring too populous rookery, the
young crow would open wide his immense red mouth and emit his
harsh, throaty hunger-call. The rook gone, he would drop once
more into his study of the buttercups, to pick from them
whatever unconsidered trifle in the way of provender he could
find. Once a small bird, a pied wagtail, flew near him, and
he begged from it just as he had done from the rooks: the
little creature would have run the risk of being itself
swallowed had it attempted to deliver a packet of flies into
that cavernous mouth. I went nearer, moving cautiously, until
I was within about four yards of him, when, half turning, he
opened his mouth and squawked, actually asking me to feed him;
then, growing suspicious, he hopped awkwardly away in the
grass. Eventually he permitted a nearer approach, and slowly
stooping I was just on the point of stroking his back when,
suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air and
flapped laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty
yards away, into which he tumbled pell-mell like a bundle of
old black rags.
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