How Animals Talk 



might pass for evidence in the matter comes from 

 my observation of the crows. In the spring many 

 of these questionable birds indulge their taste for 

 eggs or tender flesh and soon become incurable 

 nest-robbers; and for that reason I often shoot 

 them, to save other and more useful birds. The 

 method is very simple: one hides and calls, and 

 takes the crows as they appear in swift flight, the 

 number shot being commonly limited to one or 

 two at a time. And I have observed repeatedly, 

 at different times and in different localities, that 

 when I use the distress-call of a young crow as a 

 decoy, the first to appear over the tree-tops is a 

 female. This is the common rule, with occasional 

 exceptions to point or emphasize it. But when- 

 ever I clamor like a crow that has discovered an 

 owl, or send forth a senselessly excited hawing, 

 almost invariably the first crow to come whooping 

 over is a long-winged and glossy old male. 



Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity 

 on my part to kill crows in this fashion ? Perhaps 

 it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it 

 certainly is not thoughtless. One cannot blame 

 the crows for their taste in eggs or nestlings; but 

 one must note that they destroy an enormous num- 

 ber of insectivorous birds, and that the harm 

 they do in this respect outweighs their usefulness 

 in destroying field-mice and beetles. I write this 



[30] 



