12 Farmers' Bulletin 1102. 



cember, and January this grain forms over half the diet, but most of 

 it is waste, gleaned from scattered unharvested ears. During the 

 sprouting season of April and May, corn constitutes about a third of 

 the food, and at the harvest in October it again supplies over half. 

 Of 1,340 adult crows collected in varying numbers in every month 

 of the year, 824 (over 61 per cent) had fed on corn. 



It is the belief of some farmers that the depredations on this 

 grain in sprouting time are due largely to the nestlings' desire for 

 the soft, germinating kernel. Stomach analysis has disproved this, 

 and has showed that corn formed less than an eighth of the young 

 crow's food, one-third the quantity taken by the adults during ap- 

 proximately the same time. Injury to this crop may be either to 

 sprouting corn, to corn " in the milk " or in the " roasting-ear " stage, 

 or when the ripened grain has been stacked in shocks. Of the three, 

 the last form of injury is the least serious; the pulling of sprouting 

 corn sometimes results in heavy losses, but fortunately such damage 

 may be reduced by the use of deterrents; the damage to corn in 

 the roasting ear is the most vexatious form of damage to this grain 

 of which the crow is guilty. It is not so much the corn the crow 

 actually eats at this time, as it is the subsequent injury resulting 

 from water entering the ears from which the husks have been 

 partially torn, that makes such attacks among the most serious with 

 which the farmer has to contend. 



OTHER GRAINS. 



Of the smaller grains, which together form about an eighth of the 

 food of the adult crow, wheat is the favorite. This was present in 

 227 of the 1,340 stomachs examined, and it apparently takes the 

 place of corn in the crow's diet in regions where corn is not raised 

 extensively. Stomachs collected in the Northwest illustrate this. 

 When attacks upon wheat are made in sowing or sprouting time, the 

 depredations of a single crow, limited only by a most ample gizzard, 

 may be of considerable consequence. Oats are eaten much less fre- 

 quently than wheat, and when it is considered that oats are readily 

 available at all times of the year in horse droppings, the quantity of 

 this grain in the diet of the crow need not much concern the farmer. 

 Injury to kafir corn (sorghum) in autumn has been reported from 

 Kansas and Oklahoma, usually in the vicinity of roosts, where many 

 thousands of crows congregate and feed over a comparatively small 

 area day after day during fall and winter. Buckwheat also is oc- 

 casionally eaten, but by far the largest portion of it is waste. 



OTHER CROPS. 



A number of other crops are subject to damage by crows. In 

 Southern States, depredations on ripening watermelons have some- 



