44 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



Whoever has tried to climb up to the rickety old crow's nest 

 in the very top of a tall tree, knows what a job it is, and the very 

 beauty of the blotched green eggs will often stay his hand from rob- 

 bing. 



That expression ' ' an eye like an eagle 's ' ' coidd just as 

 well be "an eye like a crow's" for nothing escapes him. He knows 

 when you have a gun and when you haven't. He can detect poi- 

 soned corn better than you can tell mushrooms from toadstools, 

 and you can sneak up on the sentinel-guarded goose better than you 

 can on him. 



He is a miser and uses old stumps as safety deposit vaults. 

 Down under the bed of leaves within a hollow stump may be foimd 

 bits of broken glass, pieces of crockery and tia and many another 

 eye-charmer placed there by this hoarder of wealth. Now and then 

 he will visit his treasures, will kick away the leaves, pick his prizes 

 over and over as though to count them, and then he will bury them 

 again. 



Any assertion that the crow can siag should be challenged for 

 "caws" — a bad pun to be sure, but he deserves it. 



Among his other deeds that are almost as bad as his croaking 

 song, is his destruction of the young of other birds, his acts of 

 gluttony when he finds a nestful of eggs and his thievery of corn. 



On the other side of the ledger and to his credit are the facts 

 that he eats fieldmice, worms, and carrion, and looks pretty at a 

 distance. 



For him as for the English sparrow and other birds that have 

 the worst charged up against them, we need no protective laws. 

 Even destructive laws have little effect. 



With all his meanness there is a fascination about him and the 

 poets have not been able to forget him. 



BLUE JAY. 



Pine feathers do not always make fine birtis, if they did the 

 jay would never be hauled before the court. He has often had to 

 stand trial for tearing to pieces the nests of other birds, of eating 

 their eggs and even their young. There is hardly a bird-crime 

 that has not been charged against him, from larceny, mayhem, and 

 kidnaping to murder, yet he is such an aristocrat that he generally 

 gets acquitted — even the federal court of the biological department 



