46 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



neighborhood previously. Certainly, both around 

 our houses and in the woods, the chickadees and 

 juncos had far outnumbered them. Yet some bird, 

 spying the life-saving food on the road, had spread 

 the word in a night through all the countryside and 

 here was a veritable black army the next morning. 

 Just the other day, late in March, after all signs of 

 an early spring and the return of many birds, we 

 had a terrible gale, with snow and freezing cold. 

 Hundreds of birds perished. But on the second 

 morning I saw literally hundreds — nobody could 

 count them — of crows gathered on the southern 

 slopes of my sheep pasture and the adjoining aban- 

 doned quarry, where a freak of the wind had kept 

 the ground scoured bare. Before the storm, only 

 the four crows which spent the winter with us had 

 been in evidence, yet the word was passed around, 

 evidently for miles, that here was salvation. 



The crows, indeed, are masters of mobilization. 

 Nearly every one who has lived much in the country 

 with his eyes open has probably seen an example of 

 this. Some years ago I was walking in an upland 

 which ran like a deep, narrow fiord into the woods 

 on the western wall of one of the Franconia hills. I 

 was on my way to search for a hermit-thrush's 

 nest. Suddenly, over my head, I noticed a crow in 

 rapid, excited flight. He had come out of the woods 

 to the south, and flew across the pasture and into 

 the woods to the north, keeping close to the tops 

 of the pointed firs and cawing raucously from time 

 to time. I wondered if the bird which had just 

 passed over my head were not a courier, so I sat 

 down to wait. In a very few moments about 



