The Audubon Magazine 



Vol. II. 



JULY, 1888. 



No. 6. 



THE CROW 



THE Crow was long considered a bird 

 of ill omen, and its reputation to-day 

 suffers from this ancient superstition. 

 Among the thoughtless and ignorant this 

 bird has few friends, but its enemies are 

 many. The farmer hates it because he 

 supposes that it does great damage to his 

 crops in springtime, plucking up the young 

 grain in the fields to devour the sprouting 

 seed; later in the season he accuses it of 

 destroying the eggs of the hens and tur- 

 keys which have "stolen" their nests and 

 are sitting in the brush heaps and fence cor- 

 ners and on the edges of the wood at a 

 distance from the house; and after the 

 poultry have hatched out their young the 

 Crow is credited with appropriating to his 

 own use a part of the young chickens and 

 ducks which so mysteriously disappear from 

 the farm. No doubt in all these accusa- 

 tions there is some measure of justice; un- 

 questionably the Crow does considerable 

 damage to the farmer. But there is an- 

 other side to all this. If the Crow does 

 harm he also does good. Who so useful 

 as the Crow in finding out and devouring 

 the cutworm which destroys the tender corn 

 when it is a few inches high, eating through 

 the succulent stalks, and carrying destruc- 

 tion wherever it goes ? Who so keen and 

 methodical as the Crow in his search for 

 grubs in early spring over the sear, brown 

 fields which the grass has not yet begun 

 to brighten? The farmer may not know 



that snugly buried among the grass roots 

 are the pupse of many noxious insects, 

 which if permitted to come to maturity 

 would destroy the roots of the grass and 

 other plants, doing incalculable damage; 

 but the Crow knows that these creatures 

 are there, and he knows, too, that they 

 make very good eating, and so with half 

 a dozen of his glossy-coated companions 

 he stalks solemnly about the field, looking 

 into all the places where it seems as if insects 

 might be found, and sometimes with his 

 stout bill sinking a prospect hole in the 

 ground in an especially likely looking spot. 

 This system of forage the Crow keeps up 

 for a good part of the year. Woe to the 

 field mice if he finds their nest snugly con- 

 cealed at the root of some old stump, under 

 dense tussock, or among the sprouts of a 

 bramble bush where last year's leaves lie 

 thick upon the ground. A stroke or two of 

 his strong beak kills the parent mice, the 

 nest is torn to pieces, and the young and 

 old are carried off to feed his ravenous 

 brood. 



The crimes of the Crow consist in his in- 

 jury to very young crops, and his destruc- 

 tion of eggs and young of poultry and of 

 insect-eating birds. These last are especially 

 exposed to his attacks, and in a season the 

 number destroyed by a single Crow must 

 be very considerable. On the other hand, 

 this bird devours vast numbers of worms, 

 caterpillars, beetles, mice, shrews and 



