THE CROW 



By T. GILBERT PEARSON 



THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES 

 Educational Leaflet No. 77 



With the approach of winter, the country loses its charm for many 

 persons. The green of the fields and the riotous verdure of the woods are 

 gone, and the brown expanses of dead grass and weeds are relieved only 

 by the naked blackness of the forest trees. This, however, is a splendid 

 time to go a-field to look for birds. If the wild life is less abundant now, 

 even more sparse is the human life, and so you will have the country 

 more to yourself. 



One of the birds very sure to be seen and heard in a walk is the 

 Crow, for many of his race spurn the popular bird-movement southward 

 in the autumn when the North begins to freeze. I like 

 him best at this time of the year. There is no young l n Winter 

 corn for him to pull now, no birds' nests to pilfer, and 

 no young chickens to steal. He has few places where he can hide, and 

 his black shape looms sharp against the snow-clad hills. I see him some- 

 times in January as we come down the Hudson together I in a pullman 

 and he on an ice-floe. 



Now and then I see him strike into the water with his beak, or fly a 

 short distance to a rock or exposed gravel-bar, where things tlpt die and 

 float in the river become stranded. Once I surprised him in the woods, 

 where he had attacked an old, rotten pine-stump. He had torn half of 

 it to pieces and the fragments lay scattered on the snow. Perhaps he was 

 seeking certain insects taking their long winter sleep, or he may have 

 been after beetles. To fathom the mind of a Crow takes not only per- 

 sistent effort but considerable imagination. 



At this season Crows are highly gregarious creatures ; especially at 

 night, when they sometimes collect by hundreds or thousands in some 

 favorite grove. Some years ago there was such a 

 roost near the town of Greensboro, North Carolina. Great Roosts 

 It was resorted to for several years in succession, and 

 was a source of no end of wonder to the people of the surrounding 

 country. The roost occupied several acres in a grove of second-growth, 

 yellow-pine trees. By four o'clock in the afternoon the birds would bi-gin 

 to arrive, and from then until dark thousands would come from all direc- 

 tions. Singly, by twos and threes, in companies of ten, twenty, or a hun- 

 dred, they would appear, flying high over the forest trees, driving straight 

 across the country, pointing their line of flight as direct as only a crow 

 can fly to their nightly rendezvous. Early in the morning they were astir, 

 and if the day was bright it would not be long until all had departed, 



