502 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



The above statements, coming, as they do, from many sec- 

 tions of tlie State, go far to substantiate the claim made by 

 some persons that the crow is everywhere the greatest nat- 

 ural enemy of the smaller birds. Professor Hodge told me 

 that crows had repeatedly robbed robins' nests in a city lot, 

 under his windows, coming very early in the morning, be- 

 fore people generally were out of bed. They are just as 

 inveterate thieves of the eggs and young of the larger birds. 

 Several observers speak of crows taking the eggs and young 

 of fowls and turkeys. This is a habit so well knowni that 

 it hardly need be alluded to here, except to show their taste 

 for eggs and nestlings. 



Mr. Price, at the Middlesex Fells Reservation, is raising 

 both wild and domesticated ducks and pheasants. He says 

 that crows took five out of seven young ducks in one day. 

 In June about one hundred JNIallard ducks were turned out 

 on a small pond. Ducks lay their eggs very early in the 

 morning, and every morning crows were seen carrying off 

 eggs. Mr. Price says they took about fifty each week, car- 

 rying off, altogether, from eight hundred to one thousand 

 eggs during the season, taking about all the eggs laid by 

 the ducks. 



It is probable that where one instance of crows robbing 

 nests is observed, a thousand pass unnoticed. There is 

 only one redeeming feature in the case of the crow, and 

 that is, that not all crows habitually rob birds' nests ; for if 

 they did, they would destroy most other birds, and in time 

 we should have few birds but crows. 



Squirrels. — Forty-two observers regard squirrels as very 

 injurious to birds, thus ranking them next to the crow in 

 destructiveness, and some regard them as more vicious than 

 the crow. Others believe that squirrels do no harm, as 

 they have never seen them troubling birds in any way, nor 

 seen birds manifesting any alarm at their presence. Mr. 

 Brewster is very positive that the squirrels have never 

 troubled the birds at his place in Cambridge, where he has 

 watched carefully for years the habits of both birds and 

 squirrels. Mason A. Walton, the hermit of Gloucester, 

 says that he has several times seen red squirrels examining 



