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Show Hungry Grows Raid Sheep in England Scarcity of Usual Food Supply Makes Birds Ravenous. LONDON. -r-Crows, magpies and starlings, the "personality kids" I among reprobate birds, are usually not considered dangerous. I As a relatively obscure by-prod-' uct of frozen Britain's recent in-j in-j dustrial crisis, however, these birds began to attack iheep in large num-i num-i bers and killed quite a few of them 1 last winter. When snow blankets the ground and ice covers open water, birds either change their eating habits or starve. Then even the meek become be-come ferocious. Thus 12 swans boarded a lightship in a ravenous search for food after 14 days of fasting, fast-ing, and forced crew and master below decks until they were fed table scraps. The crow, citizen of the world, is found on every continent, and usually usu-ally is regarded as a pest, but not a dangerous one. A British semiofficial semi-official mission has studied the crow for the past two years to find out whether, in impartial judgment, his good and bad habits balance. Recent reports from the village of Louth, Lincolnshire, where snow was blown into 18-foot drifts, were all bad, as regards the crow. Lincolnshire is the home of the famous black-faced, white-legged Lincolnshire breed of sheep, liked the world over for its hardihood and wool production. During the hard winter, strong-beaked strong-beaked crows, magpies and star-j star-j lings, violent from hunger, attacked flocks of sheep. They fluttered down on the woolly backs of the animals and dug through the hide into the warm fat underneath. Many sheep not killed outright were so wounded they had to be destroyed. de-stroyed. But the gravest danger was not immediate loss of sheep, which was small compared to the 25 million head grazing over the island. It was the danger that these birds might develop a permanent liking for live mutton. It is not so nebulous a fear as it might appear on the surface. It has happened before in New Zealand, for instance. |