26 



During severe weather they disappear entirely for a month or six 

 weeks at a time. Near large cities, where offal or carrion may be 

 found, they usually remain throughout the winter in large numbers. 

 They are also found during the entire winter along the south-eastern 

 sea-coast, where the receding tides furnish them an abundance of 

 food, and where the ground is not so heavily and frequently cov- 

 ered with snow as in the interior. 



Gregauious Habits. 



Crows are very clannish in their habits, consorting together in 

 flocks during the entire season, except while they are nesting, and 

 assembling during the winter in roosting-places to pass the night. 



Professor Barrows has given an excellent account of the roost- 

 ing habits of crows in the middle and some of the western States.* 

 Here permanent winter roosts are found, to which the crows come 

 nightly for many miles around and from which they go out early 

 each morning. It is estimated that several of these roosts contain 

 from fifty thousand to three hundred thousand crows each. This 

 gregarious roosting habit is observed also among the crows of Mas- 

 sacluisetts, yet the writer has never seen in this Commonwealth 

 such large permanent roosts as are described as existing in the 

 middle, southern and western States. This may be explained by 

 the fact that a large number of crows migrate south from the 

 northern States and crowd into the middle and southern States, 

 where, the winter being less severe, food is more plentiful. 



The crow roosts visited by the writer in eastern and central Mas- 

 sachusetts were in evergreen trees, mainly in white pine woods, 

 and there the crows were known to change their roosting places, 

 moving from one locality to another and again returning to the 

 original roost. 



Just why the crows congregate in these winter roosts is hard to 

 determine. It may be that they are in a measure protected, by 

 their great numbers, from their enemies, yet they are doubtless 

 sometimes attacked by the great horned owl in the night, as evi- 

 dences of the destruction of crows by these owls are occasionally 

 found in the snow about the roosts. Crows sometimes hold what 

 bears the semblance of a funeral ceremony over their dead. In 

 such a case, a crow having been shot flew some distance and fell 

 dead upon the snow. Soon afterwards its body was discovered 

 by another crow, whose cries immediately assembled others from 

 all quarters of the compass, until avast concourse was flying over- 



* BulletinNo. 6, United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Ornithology 

 and Mammalogy, " Common Crow of the United States," pages 11, 12. 



