While I was deliberating a crow came flying low down the leaze, and alighted by the pond.

His object, no doubt, was a mussel.

He could not have seen me, and yet no sooner did he touch the ground than he looked uneasily about, sprang up, and flew straight away, as if he had smelt danger.

Had he stayed he would have been shot, though it would have spoiled my ambush: the idea of the crows picking out the eyes of dying creatures was always peculiarly revolting to me.
If the pond was a haunt of his, it was too near the young partridges, which were weakly that season.

A kestrel is harmless compared to a crow.
Surely the translators have wrongly rendered Don Quixote's remark that the English did not kill crows, believing that King Arthur, instead of dying, was by enchantment turned into one, and so fearing to injure the hero.