Destruction by Natural Enemies 25 



ripe corn, insects, crawfish, frogs, wild mice, and 

 domestic poultry, they would as a rule be likely 

 to destroy wild birds' nests only when they 

 happened accidentally to find them. I once had 

 two raccoons in a large pen in which I had 

 placed a tree for them to climb. One morning, 

 having a live crow and no special place for him, 

 I put him in the pen with the raccoons. He flew 

 about, made himself at home, and his hosts seem- 

 ed barely interested in him. Ten minutes after 

 dark I went to see if everything was all right and 

 found nothing left of the crow but his feathers. 

 A raccoon had probably climbed the tree after 

 the bird had gone to roost, and either captured 

 him where he slept or caused him to blunder to 

 the ground in the dark. 



Practically all members of the weasel tribe, 

 including skunks and mink, are enemies of birds ; 

 most of them will eat the young and sometimes 

 the eggs. Weasels are probably very destructive 

 to birds, since they are extremely active and 

 fearless, wonderful climbers and in the wild 

 state almost wholly carnivorous. Moreover, 

 they seem to kill for the love of killing, whether 

 they are hungry or not, a fact testified to 

 by many a farmer whose poultry yard has 

 been visited by these blood-thirsty creatures. 

 Weasels hunt by scent like hounds, and cover 



