BLACK OR IRIDESCENT BLACK 409 



evening sky. From these roosts at daylight each morn- 

 ing the entire company scatter over the country in 

 search of food, undoubtedly covering many miles in their 

 flight, but each one finding his way back to spend the 

 hours of darkness in the additional safety that community 

 gives. 



As to the economic value of the Crow opinions differ. 

 In California, acorns, beechnuts, berries of various 

 shrubs and trees, seeds and all kinds of fruit, with in- 

 sects such as locusts, black beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, 

 spiders, cutworms, angleworms, and injurious larva3 form 

 a large part of his daily menu. In addition small mam- 

 mals and snakes, frogs, lizards, snails, crawfish, fish, all 

 kinds of dead flesh, and the eggs or nestlings of other 

 birds are his victims. It is very disheartening to become 

 interested in watching some brood of song birds develop, 

 and then to find some morning that the crow has made 

 a breakfast on them. And the farmer who finds his 

 cornfield ravaged or his young chicks devoured by a 

 flock of the thieves feels a righteous anger in his heart 

 against the spoilers. The fact that all feathered crea- 

 tures are arrayed against him is proof to me that, from 

 the bird-lover's standpoint, he does more harm than 

 good. 



The California species is said to build much nearer the 

 ground than his Eastern relative, his nest being rarely 

 over twenty feet up and from that down to five or six 

 feet. My own records aic, lK)wever, that nests lower 

 than thirty feet are rare even in the West. The struc- 

 ture itself is identical with that of the Eastern crow, and 



