THE CROW. m 



ber of little whirligig wind-mills. One large field that we 

 passed evidently belonged to a man of great resources in 

 the way of expedients; for, among a number of contri- 

 vances, no two were alike; in one spot, large as life, stood the 

 usual man of straw ; here was a tin pan on a pole, there a 

 sheet was flapping its full breadth in the breeze, here was a 

 straw hat on a stick, there an old flail ; in one corner a 

 broken tin Dutch oven glittered in the sunshine, and at right 

 angles with it was a tambourine! It must needs be a bold 

 Crow that will venture to attack such a camp." Then she 

 adds in a foot-note: "This field yielded ninety- three bushels 

 of maize to the acre the following autumn." 



The second charge to be brought against the Crow is the 

 destruction of other birds' nests. Never shall I forget the 

 unhappy impression he made upon me many years ago in 

 Nova Scotia, on my first discovery of the Snowbird's 

 (Junco) nest containing young just hatched. The nest 

 was under the bottom rail of a fence, and on approaching it 

 . the second time I discovered a Crow in the act of gulping 

 down the last of the young. Never was my indignation 

 over a bird greater, except when, in my childhood, a large 

 Hawk carried off my black chicken. " The most remarka- 

 ble feat of the Crow," says Audubon, " is the nicety with 

 which it, like the Jay, pierces an egg with its bill, in order 

 to carry it off, and eat it with security. In this manner I 

 have seen it steal, one after another, all the eggs of a wild 

 Turkey's nest." " In spring," says Wilson, "when he makes 

 his appearance among the groves and low thickets, all the 

 feathered songsters are instantly alarmed, well knowing the 

 depredations and murders he commits on their nests, eggs, 

 and young." 



But, as in the case of many other transgressors, there are 

 some weighty things to be said in his favor. In the same 



