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 larvee 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 Kastern relative, his nest being rarely 
over twenty feet up and from that down to five or six 
feet. My own records are, however, 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 
