which has a
beautiful red lining to its sable wings. A flock of black cockatoos in
flight gives an impression of a sunset cloud, its under surface shot
with crimson.

Cockatoos can be very destructive to crops, especially to maize, so the
farmers have declared war upon them. The birds seem to be able to hold
their own pretty well in this campaign, for they are of wonderful
cunning. When a crowd of cockatoos has designs on a farmer's
maize-patch, the leader seems to prospect the place thoroughly; he acts
as though he were a general, providing a safe bivouac for an army; he
sets sentinels on high trees commanding a view of all points of danger.
Then the flock of cockatoos settles on the maize and gorges as fast as
it can. If the farmer or his son tries to approach with a gun, a
sentinel cockatoo gives warning and the whole flock clears out to a
place of safety. As soon as the danger is over they come back to the
feast.

Even more cunning is the Australian crow. It is a bird of prey and
perhaps the best-hated bird in the world. An Australian bushman will
travel a whole day to kill a crow. For he has, at the time when the
sheep were lambing, or when, owing to drought, they were weak, seen the
horrible cruelties of the crow. This evil bird will attack weak sheep
and young lambs, tearing out their eyes and leaving them to perish
miserably. There have even been terrible cases where men lost in the
Bush and perishing of thirst have been attacked by crows and have been
found still alive, but with their eyes gone.

It is no wonder that there is a deadly feud between man and crow. But
the crow is so cunning as to be able to overmatch man's superior
strength. A crow knows when a man is carrying a gun, and will keep out
of range then; if a man is without a gun the crow will let him approach
quite near. One can never catch many crows in the same district with the
same device; they seem to learn to avoid what is dangerous. Very rarely
can they be poisoned, no matter how carefully the bait is prepared.

Bushmen tell all sorts of stories of the cunning of the crow. One is
that of a man who suffered severely from a crow's depredations on his
chickens. He prepared a poisoned bait and noticed the bird take it, but
not devour it; that crow carefully took the poisoned tit-bit and put it
in front of the man's favourite dog, which ate it, and was with
difficulty saved from death! Another story is that of a man who thought
to get within r