Mr Warde Fowler in his Summer Studies of Birds and Books has a pleasant chapter on wagtails, in which he remarks incidentally that he does not care for the big solemn birds that please, or are dear to, "Mr Hudson." Their bigness disturbs and their solemnity oppresses him. They do not twitter and warble, and flit hither and thither, flirting their feathers, and with their dainty gracefulness and airy, fairy ways wind themselves round his heart. Wagtails are quite big enough for him; they are, in fact, as big as birds should be, and so long as these charming little creatures abound in these islands he (Mr Fowler) will be content. Indeed, he goes so far as to declare that on a desert island, without a human creature to share its solitude with him, he would be happy enough if only wagtails were there to keep him company. Mr Fowler is not joking; he tells us frankly what he thinks and feels, and when we come to consider the matter seriously, as he wishes us to do, we discover that [Pg_160] there is nothing astonishing in his confession—that his mental attitude is capable of being explained. It is only natural, in an England from which most of the larger birds have been banished, that he should have become absorbed in observing and in admiration of the small species that remain; for we observe and study the life that is nearest to us, and seeing it well we are impressed by its perfection—the perfect correspondence that exists between the creature and its surroundings—by its beauty, grace, and other attractive qualities, as we are not impressed by the life which is at a distance, and of which we only obtain rare and partial glimpses.  
These thoughts passed through my mind one cold, windy day in spring, several hours of which I spent lying on the short grass on the summit of a cliff, watching at intervals a pair of ravens that had their nest on a ledge of rock some distance below. Big and solemn, and solemn and big, they certainly were, and although inferior in this respect to eagle, pelican, bustard, crane, vulture, heron, stork, and many another feathered notable, to see them was at the same time a pleasure and a relief. It also occurred to me at the time that, alone on a desert island, I should be better off with ravens than wagtails for companions; and this for an excellent reason. The wagtail is no [Pg_161] doubt a very lively, pretty, engaging creature—so for that matter is the house fly—but between ourselves and the small birds there exists, psychologically, a vast gulf. Birds, says Matthew Arnold, live beside us, but unknown, and try how we will we can find no passages from our souls to theirs. But to Arnold—in the poem to which I have alluded at all events—a bird simply meant a caged canary; he was not thinking of the larger, more mammal-like, and therefore more human-like, mind of the raven, and, it may be added, of the crows generally.
 
The pair I spent so long a time in watching were greatly disturbed at my presence on the cliff. Their anxiety was not strange, seeing that their nest is annually plundered in the interest of the "cursed collector," as Sir Herbert Maxwell has taught us to name the worst enemy of the rarer British birds. The "worst," I say; but there is another almost if not quite as bad, and who in the case of some species is really worse. At intervals of from fifteen to twenty minutes they would appear overhead uttering their angry, deep croak, and, with wings outspread, seemingly without an effort on their parts allow the wind to lift them higher and higher until they would look no bigger than daws; and, after dwelling for a couple of minutes on the air at that [Pg_162] great height, they would descend to the earth again, to disappear behind a neighbouring cliff. And on each occasion they exhibited that wonderful a?rial feat, characteristic of the raven, and rare among birds, of coming down in a series of long drops with closed wings. I am inclined to think that a strong wind is necessary for the performance of this feat, enabling the bird to fall obliquely, and to arrest the fall at any moment by merely throwing out the wings. At any rate, it is a fact that I have never seen this method of descent used by the bird in calm weather. It is totally different to the tumbling down, as if wounded, of ravens when two or more are seen toying with each other in the air—a performance which is also practised by rooks and other species of the crow family. The tumbling feat is indulged in only when the birds are playing, and, as it would appear, solely for the fun of the thing; the feat I am describing has a use, as it enables the bird to come down from a great height in the air in the shortest time and with the least expenditure of force possible. With the vertical fall of a bird like the gannet on its prey we are not concerned here, but with the descent to earth of a bird soaring at a considerable height. Now, many birds when rushing rapidly down appear to close their wings, but they are never wholly closed; [Pg_163] in some cases they are carried as when folded, but are slightly raised from the body; in other cases the wing is tightly pressed against the side, but the primaries stand out obliquely, giving the descending bird the figure of a barbed arrow-head. This may be seen in daws, choughs, pipits, and many other species. The raven suddenly closes his outspread wings, just as a man might drop his arms to his sides, and falls head downwards through the air like a stone bird cast down from its pedestal; but he falls obliquely, and, after falling for a space of twenty or thirty or more feet, he throws out his wings and floats for a few seconds on the air, then falls again, and then again, until the earth is reached.
 
Let the reader imagine a series of invisible wires stretched, wire above wire, at a distance of thirty or forty yards apart, to a height of six or seven hundred yards from the earth. Let him next imagine an acrobat, infinitely more daring, more agile, and graceful in action than any performer he has ever seen, standing on the highest wire of all, in his black silk tights, against the blue sky, his arms outstretched; then dropping his arms to his sides and diving through the air to the next wire, then to the next, and so on successively until he comes to the earth. The feat would be similar, only on a larger scale and less [Pg_164] beautiful than that of the ravens as I witnessed it again and again from the cliff on that windy day.
 
While watching this magnificent display it troubled me to think that this pair of ravens would probably not long survive to be an ornament to the coast. Their nest, it has been stated, is regularly robbed, but I had been informed that in the summer of 1894 a third bird appeared, and it was then conjectured that the pair had succeeded in rearing one of their young. About a month later a raven was picked up dead on the coast by a boatman,—killed, it was believed, by his fellow-ravens,—and since then two birds only have been seen. There are only two more pair of ravens on the Somersetshire coast, and, as one of these has made no attempt to breed of late, we may take it that the raven population of this county, where the species was formerly common, has now been reduced to two pairs.
 
Anxious to find out if there was any desire in the place to preserve the birds I had been observing, I made many inquiries in the neighbourhood, and was told that the landlord cared nothing about them, and that the tenant's only desire was to see the last of them. The tenant kept a large number of sheep, and always feared, one of his men told me, that the ravens would attack and kill his lambs. It was true [Pg_165] that they had not done so as yet, but they might kill a lamb at any time; and, besides, there were the rabbits—the place swarmed with them—there was no doubt that a young rabbit was taken occasionally.
 
Why, then, I asked, if they were so destructive, did not his master go out and shoot them at once? The man looked grave, and answered that his master would not do the killing himself, but would be very glad to see it done by some other person.
 
How curious it is to find that the old superstitions about the raven and the evil consequences of inflicting wilful injury on the bird still survive, in spite of the fact that the species has been persecuted almost to extirpation!
 
"Have you not read, sir," Don Quixote is made to say, "the annals and histories of England, wherein are renowned and famous exploits of ............