NORTHWESTERN CROW 273 



Pearse tells me that some young birds are taken, but the crows do not 

 seem to be persistent in hunting for them, though some individuals 

 may get the habit. He once saw a crow that was apparently watching 

 to locate a robin's nest and was being mobbed by a lot of flycatchers, 

 warblers, and chickadees. He next heard the agonized cries of a young 

 robin, which the crow had captured and was carrying off; the old 

 robins attacked the crow and made it drop the young bird. "The other 

 birds in some way recognized the crow as dangerous and kept up their 

 mobbing. Though I have seen the northwestern crow working through 

 wooded areas, evidently looking for young birds or nests, there is none 

 of the systematic beating of the ground that may be seen done by the 

 western crow ; moreover, I have seen very few cases of nests that may 

 have been destroyed by crows." 



R. M. Bond sends me the following notes on the feeding habits of 

 the northwestern crow: "I have seen crows foraging in fields, where 

 they were seen to capture grasshoppers. They also, in one case, were 

 observed eating ripe wild blackberries (Rubus vitifolius). I have also 

 seen them feeding behind a plow in company with Brewer's blackbirds 

 and gulls." He says that they had favorite times for feeding on the 

 beaches: "One was near high tide, when the incoming water separated 

 the house garbage from the ashes, with which it was frequently dumped, 

 and when the innumerable amphipod 'sand fleas' were retreating before 

 the water to the shelter of windrows of kelp and seaweed. I had a blind 

 in a hollow log of driftwood and could watch the crows eat enormous 

 numbers of sand fleas, as the flock worked by me. The other favorite 

 period was near low tide, when cockles and gastropods were exposed. 



"Carrion was a favorite food. This consisted mainly of dead fish 

 that washed up on the shore. Dead dogs, cats, horses, etc., were also 

 eagerly eaten, though they amounted to a very small percentage of the 

 available food. Once a dead porpoise washed ashore on Blake Island, 

 and for two or three days there was a stream of crows passing across 

 about three miles of open water to this feast and back, apparently to 

 feed their young." 



Stomach analysis of three specimens by J. A. Munro (MS.) showed 

 that the bulk of the food consisted of shore crabs and small mollusks; 

 crab remains amounted to 80 percent in one case, and small mollusks to 

 80 and 60 percent in the other two cases. Mollusks and crab remains 

 were found in all three stomachs, and the remainder of the food in- 

 cluded a few insect remains, fish eggs (probably sculpins), oat husks, 

 and miscellaneous vegetable matter. 



Behaznor. — As northwestern crows apparently do little damage to 

 human interests, they are much tamer than crows elsewhere and pay 



