The Crow 467 



sleeping hosts and shouted aloud to them ; but they did not heed my presence, 

 nor was I ever able to arrive at any reasonable explanation for their nightly 

 assemblies. Surely they did not gather thus, as some writers have suggested, 

 purely because of an impulse for sociability and for love of their kind, for I 

 saw them quarreling among themselves on many occasions. 



Especially do I recall one evening when, as I watched them coming to 

 roost, I became conscious of an unusual commotion among a flock of eight. 

 One evidently was in great disfavor with the others, for, with 

 angry and excited cawings, they were striking at him in a most „ ^ 



unfriendly manner. The strength of the persecuted bird was 

 all but spent when I first sighted them, and when, perhaps two minutes later, 

 the fleeing one sustained a particularly vicious onslaught, it began to fall. 

 It did not descend gradually, like a bird injured while on the wing, but plunged 

 downward like a falling rock a hundred feet or more into the top of a large 

 pine-tree, and, bounding from limb to limb, struck the ground but a few yards 

 from me. When I picked it up I found it to be quite dead. 



When the pursuers saw their victim fall their caws abruptly ceased, as 

 if the birds were shocked at what they had done; and, turning, they departed 

 silently and swiftly, all in different directions. I wonder if they were execu- 

 tioners performing a duty for the good of the clan? Perhaps they were only 

 thugs, sandbagging a quiet and respectable citizen on his way home! 



Birds are particularly subject to disease in winter, and many, perish from 

 affections of the throat and lungs. Crows are attacked at times by a malady 

 called roupj and hundreds of the bodies of those that have died from it may 

 sometimes be found on the ground beneath a roost. Wild birds have no doctor, 

 who can come at the first signs of an epidemic and vaccinate them against 

 its ravages. 



Crows are among the earliest birds in spring to build their nests, and 

 usually freshly laid eggs may be found during the first half of April. These 

 eggs are bluish green, thickly marked with various shades of 

 brown, so that they blend admirably with the canopy of green p 



pine-needles among which the nest is so often placed. To climb 

 to a Crow's nest is often quite an undertaking. Sometimes, it is true, the situa- 

 tion may be only thirty or forty feet from the ground, but I recall once climb- 

 ing to a Crow's nest in Florida, which, by actual measurement with a cord, was 

 ninety-one feet in air. The nests are heavy, compact structures, made of sticks 

 and twigs, and lined with grapevine-bark, grass, and sometimes with moss. 

 The old birds are usually very quiet when in the immediate neighborhood of 

 their nest, and frequently the only evidence one will have of the fact that they 

 are near him is seeing a Crow fly swiftly and noiselessly away among the 

 tree-tops. 



For hundreds of years farmers have regarded the Crow as one of their 

 most annoying enemies. This is chiefly because the Crows dearly love to 



