LAND BIRDS. 421 
The Crow is proverbially shrewd and shy and doubtless succeeds in 
rearing its young in safety in the great majority of cases. In the latitude 
of Lansing the young leave the nest by the middle of June, and there is no 
reason to suppose that more than one brood is reared in the season. 
The economic status of the Crow has been in dispute for more than a 
hundred years, and in spite of all the work which has been done in the 
attempt to settle the question, not a few points still remain obscure. Be- 
tween the years 1886 and 1894 the author made a continuous and minute 
study of the food of Crows, based primarily upon the examination of more 
than 900 stomachs brought together at the Department of Agriculture in 
Washington, and this work has been supplemented by more than seventeen 
years of observation and examination in this state. For a detailed account 
of the food of the Crow as shown by stomach examination the reader is 
referred to the author’s work on the Crow published by the United States 
Department of Agriculture in 1895.* The following abstract and summary 
of this investigation may be useful to those to whom the bulletin itself is 
not accessible: 
The writer personally examined, classified and estimated the stomach 
contents of the 909 Crows on which the investigation was primarily based. 
The remains of insects found in these stomachs, after careful study in our 
own laboratory, were submitted to the Entomological Division of the 
Department of Agriculture and were determined by the members of that 
division, Mr. E. A. Schwarz submitting a report upon the insect food of the 
Crow which was embodied in the bulletin as finally published. 
As a result of the detailed investigation of these stomachs and of the 
vast amount of other evidence gathered, the writer became fully convinced 
that the Crow on the whole is far more injurious than beneficial. The 
stomach examinations showed that the average amount of animal food 
in winter was 33 percent and in summer 67 percent, while the average 
amount of vegetable food was exactly complementary, that is, vegetable 
food formed 67 percent of the winter food and but 33 percent of the summer 
food. We may say therefore, speaking roughly, that the Crow’s food for 
the year consists of nearly equal parts of animal and vegetable substances, 
the animal predominating in summer and the vegetable in winter. 
Much the larger part of the animal food consists of insects, the average 
for the year amounting to about 24 percent. The proportion howeve 
varies widely according to season. Thus in January insects form less 
than 3 percent of the food, while in April they form 53 percent, in May 
49 percent and in June 41 percent. This large percentage of insect food, 
and the common assumption that all insects are injurious, leads the careless 
observer to conclude that the Crow must be necessarily a very beneficial 
bird. Asa matter of fact only a small part of the insects eaten are injurious, 
many are beneficial, others are neutral, and a large number—whether good 
or bad—are dead before they are picked up and hence have no bearing 
on the question. Furthermore the stomach examinations prove beyond 
doubt that the Crow must be held blameworthy for this neglect to eat at 
all many of the most common and injurious insects which attack the farmer’s 
crops. The following extracts from Mr. Schwarz’ report will give a fair 
idea of the insect food: 
“The insect food is almost exclusively composed of terrestrial species, that is, such as 
are found on the surface of the ground, or hide during the daytime at the base of plants 
* Barrows and Schwarz.—The Common Crow in its Relation to Agriculture. Bull. No. 6, 1895, 
Division of Ornithology and Mammalogy, U. 8. Dept. of Agriculture. 
