These, like the tufted ducks and
grebes, are entirely self-supporting. The wild duck are pensioners, being
fed artificially, though they are wild birds, or descended from birds
which were wild, just as are the London wood-pigeons.
THE CARRION CROW
Those familiar with the valley of the Thames and with the wild population
both of the riverside and of the adjacent hills, will set down the carrion
crow as the typical resident bird of the whole district. On the London
Thames as high as Teddington it keeps mainly to the line of the river
itself, on the banks of which and on the market gardens and meadows it
finds abundant food, while the elms of large suburban residences give it
both shelter and a safe nesting place. The bird is also commonly mistaken
for a rook, and so shares the privileges of those popular birds. Higher up
the river it swarms all along the Oxfordshire and Berkshire banks where
not killed down by keepers, and a perfect army of them has for years
invaded and been settled in the elm-bordered meadows of the Vale of White
Horse. Thence it has spread on to the downs, where since the gradual
abandonment of cultivation on the highest ground, and the removal of the
scattered population of carters and keepers from a very large area, it now
has matters all its own way.
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