44 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



But the very next week I saw still another ex- 

 ample. I chanced to be riding through Long Island, 

 and in many of the fields in the central portion corn- 

 shocks still stood, and there were patches of oats 

 here and there, or perhaps only single stalks ndw 

 and again, missed by the reapers and left lying on 

 the ground. At all such spots the crows were con- 

 gregated. But the following night it snowed, and 

 in the morning I saw flight after flight of crows 

 headed south toward the seashore, without doubt 

 making for the water's edge, where they could still 

 get at food, either shellfish or refuse cast up by the 

 tide. 



Only last winter, in my own inland hills, I watched 

 the crows adapt themselves, on a much smaller 

 scale (for they do not winter with us in any large 

 number), to the necessities of the snow. The 

 snow was very deep, and most of their vegetable 

 food was no doubt scarce or inaccessible. But 

 through a meadow ran the depression made by a. 

 little rivulet, and here and there along its banks the 

 water had worked in under the snow cornice till the 

 overhang collapsed, exposing a bit of black mud, or 

 at any rate but slightly covering it. Here two or 

 three crows would congregate, being startlingly 

 visible on the great white field of the meadow, and 

 dig into the mud, even scratching away the snow to 

 expose it. Examination of their work showed that 

 they had excavated and devoured crawfish, and no 

 doubt had found other animal life as well, of which 

 no remains were left. That same winter, too, I saw 

 on a field of snow about six inches deep a remarkable 

 evidence of the crow's acuteness of sense which 



