. The natural history of birds . rs of many other racesmay be found, though rudimental, or at least partiallyconcealing each other. Those characters are alsochiefly combined in the bill of the raven ; though inhis feet he approaches the vultures, and in his wingspartially the low-flying hawks. In tracing the gradation from the raven throughthe analogous races, we find that the bill gets lessand less powerful in those characters in which it mostresembles those of the vultures, namely, its adaptationfor tugging and tearing the flesh of animals from thebones. But the raven is also a preyer. He ra
. The natural history of birds . rs of many other racesmay be found, though rudimental, or at least partiallyconcealing each other. Those characters are alsochiefly combined in the bill of the raven ; though inhis feet he approaches the vultures, and in his wingspartially the low-flying hawks. In tracing the gradation from the raven throughthe analogous races, we find that the bill gets lessand less powerful in those characters in which it mostresembles those of the vultures, namely, its adaptationfor tugging and tearing the flesh of animals from thebones. But the raven is also a preyer. He rarely,though sometimes, hawks on the wing, and when hedoes so, he strikes with the bill, not with the claws;but he preys much on the ground, on young birds,the smaller mammalia, and even the larger oneswhen disease or casualty brings them within hisreach. OMNIVOROUS BIRDS. 177 Of the others, the carrion crow most resemblesthe raven ; but its bill is neither so formidable as aninstrument of slaughter, nor so capable of tearing the. Raven. flesh of recent prey. The culmen of the upper man-dible is not so much arched, nor the tip so muchhooked, and consequently the bill can neither cut sowell nor hold so firmly. This bird accordingly eatslarge animals, chiefly in the state of carrion ; andfinds much of his food in the eggs and callow youngof the ground gallinidee. The other crows, on to the rook, have the bill moreand more approximating to straightness; and in thatbird we have certainly an approximation to theground birds which feed upon seeds; and differentas they are in their appearance, and many of theirhabits, there is a correspondence in nature betweenthe rook and the skylark, which brings them to thesame field for their food. The bill of the raven and crow, is continuedthrough the magpies, the rollers, and several otherbirds, which differ more and more in the other partsof their structure and in their habits, till we come tothose races which are more and more tree birds, andw
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookidnaturalhistoryof00mudi, booksubjectbirds
