158 Mr Audubon's Account of the Carrion Crow. 



entrails of slaughtered animals, dead dogs, rotten eggs, &c. 

 than to hunt in the fields like the Vultur aura. 



Early in February they make choice of a companion in the 

 air, and this is the only season when they exhibit any thing 

 like activity. The males chase each other furiously for great 

 distances, going through the air with a rumbling noise. The 

 conqueror rejoins the female, flies a considerable length by 

 her side, and alighting on a tall dead tree, they ratify the con- 

 tract of annual union by many caresses. 



Unlike the buzzards, the carrion crows do not seek to de- 

 posit their eggs in low damp retired swamps. They search 

 for situations on high ridges ; and the neighbourhood of a vil- 

 lage or a plantation is by no means rejected. In this state 

 (Louisiana,) you can easily find their eggs by examining the 

 standing hollowed trees, and in some of them, on the bare 

 earth, their two large eggs are deposited, and are hatched 

 after twenty-eight days incubation. I found a nest of these 

 birds where the hole of entrance was near four feet from the 

 earth, and just large enough to admit the owner. Out of that 

 dark abode the young did not make their escape until fully 

 fledged, and they had been so seldom fed by their fatigued 

 parents, that they were scarcely able to fly, though they were 

 nearly full grown. 



In different instances I have found bits of earthen-ware with 

 the eggs, and I might have become superstitious on this head, 

 had I not been told by a planter that they had probably been 

 left by runaway negroes, who had rested and hid themselves 

 in these hollow trees. 



The moment the carrion crow hears any person approach- 

 ing their nest they fly off, and if the tree has a double entrance, 

 they sneak off on the opposite side, and hopping away twenty 

 or thirty steps, they watch the movements of the intruder. If 

 this happens during incubation they and some other species 

 void themselves on such occasions. They are not the least 

 discomposed on touching the eggs. I once, indeed, carried two 

 eggs home, drew one of them and blew out the contents of the 

 other to keep the shell, and having replaced one, and substi- 

 tuted for the other that of a tame turkey, I found both the 

 birds hatched, though at different times. In another instance, 

 I made a female lay five eggs successively, by removing every 



