^'°9o^'^] Stone, Wi>iter Crow Life in Dela-vare Valley. 267 



NOTES ON WINTER CROW LIFE IN THE 

 DELAW^ARE VALLEY. 



BY WITMER STONE. 



Some years ago Messrs. Samuel N. Rhoads, Henry W. Fowler, 

 and the writer became interested in collecting data relative to the 

 winter habits and distribution of Crows in the lower Delaware 

 Valley, especially wath regard to the location of their roosts and 

 the direction of their morning and evening lines of flight. As 

 often happens circumstances prevented the completion of our 

 work, and our notes have remained for a long while untouched. 

 Upon looking them over with a view to continuing the main line 

 of investigation I find some correlative material bearing upon the 

 winter life of the crows of the vicinity of Philadelphia which, 

 seems worthy of publication, and I present it here with due 

 acknowledgments to my colleagues for their valuable aid in gath- 

 ering the information together. 



The immediate vicinity of the Delaware River, from some dis- 

 tance north of Philadelphia all the way to the bay, is a great ren- 

 dezvous for winter crows. To the passengers on the ferryboats 

 they are a familiar sight, as they mingle with the Herring Gulls, 

 flapping low over the water to pick up such scraps as may go 

 floating by or in more severe weather alighting on the grinding ice 

 cakes, and walking about where the pack has been frozen solidly 

 together. 



On the broad meadows which line the shores of the river, both 

 above and below the city, crows abound during the daytime and 

 walk about in search of food until it is time to seek their roosts 

 on the New Jersey side of the river, when the long straggling 

 flights may be seen winging their way homeward, sometimes in the 

 bright glow of a winter sunset, at others in the teeth of a blinding 

 storm, but always stubbornly heading for the particular roosting 

 ground that generations of ancestors have used before them. 



It seems a pity that a bird whose habits present such an inter- 

 esting and unique field for study should be subject to persecution, 

 especially since the Department of Agriculture has shown that his 

 good deeds in the destruction of insects quite equal his depreda- 



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