A low-living fellow, I haven’t a friend; My heart, like my habit, is black; My nature is “yellow”; my greed has no end, And every virtue I lack. The aerial gangster, the bird racketeer Wherever I go follows frenzy and fear; But I flap on my way with a curse and a sneer To bluster and bully and sack. My methods are savage. I come with my mob To harry the helpless and weak, To rend and to ravage, to murder and rob, And my ways are the ways of a sneak. No meat is amiss to my cavernous maw; I kidnap the nestlings; I bow to no law; Then I’m off on my way with a sinister caw Or an egg at the end of my beak. I’m cautious and cunning and gruesome and grim; For what I can’t slaughter I maim. But if you come gunning your chances are slim, For I know every trick of the game, My signals are many, my sentries alert; Bird-shot or abuses do me little hurt; And, like every gangster, my gifts I pervert. In short, I’m a fowl of ill-fame.