The Crow in Its Relation to Agriculture. 



13 



times resulted in heavy losses. Apples, peanuts, pecans, and almonds 

 are less frequently injured; while the aggregate losses to such crops as 

 beans, peas, figs, oranges, grapes, and cherries are insignificant. 



Wm) Fetiits. 



Only about 14 per cent of the adult crow's sustenance is at present 

 derived from wild fruits and nuts, a source whence it originally ob- 

 tained all of its vegetable food. This part of its diet is secured from 

 a variety of sources, but chiefly from acorns and chestnuts. Fruit of 

 the various sumachs, poison ivy and poison oak, bayberry, dogwood, 

 sour gum, wild cherries, grapes, Virginia creeper, and pokeberry are 

 also common ingredients in the food. 



DISTRIBUTION OF SEEDS. 



The mere consumption of wild fruit by the crow involves nothing 

 of economic importance, but as its digestive processes destroy prac- 

 tically none of the embryos of the seeds, the bird acts as an important 

 distributor of certain noxious plants, as poison ivy and poison oak. 

 In this work, however, it is only supplementing the activities of the 

 many other native birds which feed on these seeds, often to a greater 

 extent than does the crow. Furthermore, as most of these seeds are 

 eaten by the crow during the winter, a large part of those regurgi- 

 tated are deposited at their roosts, often in dense stands of timber, 

 \where the chances for sprouting are poor. 



Table II. — Percentages of the principal food items of the nestling crow. 



S& 



9 . 

 ■as 



-43 



IS 



23 



^1 



o 



§3 



i ID rt 



17.44 



3.90 



2.59 



14.60 



2.81 



S.34 



0.68 



1.60 



8.22 



SUMMARY OF FOOD HABITS. 



The crow's consumption of insects presents the strongest argu- 

 ment in the bird's favor. About a fifth of its diet is secured from 

 the insect world, and among the pests it destroys are some of the 

 most troublesome with which the farmer has to contend. Many of 

 the insects it eats are taken early in spring, when their life cycles 

 are at the lowest ebb and when their destruction results in the greatest 

 good. 



Conspicuous among such food items are May beetles and their de- 

 structive larvse, white grubs, of which the crow is an effective enemy. 

 In its consumption of grasshoppers the crow probably renders man 

 its greatest individual service, and in regions where these insects are 



