THE CROW 



By T. GILBERT PEARSON 



%^t jl^ational Sififiocieition of <autmbon ^ocittitfi 



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 black- 

 ness 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 

 In Winter the year. There is no young 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 sometimes 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 that 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 persistent 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 Greens- 

 Great Roosts boro. North Carolina. 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 begin to arrive, and from then until dark thousands would come from 

 all directions. Singly, by twos and threes, in companies of ten, twenty, or a 

 hundred, 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, winging their way 

 over the fields and woodlands to widely scattered feeding-grounds. 



Often I watched them come and go, and one night walked beneath the 



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