134 BIRDS 



perches, and yet its assurance is amply justified in its 

 steadily increasing numbers. With a caw, caw, caw, ioT^ 

 friend and foe alike, perhaps it knows its own true worth 

 better than the average farmer, who has persecuted it 

 with bounty laws, shot-gun, and poison for generations, 

 keeping no account of the immense numbers of cutworms, 

 grubs and larvae of many pests it picks up as it walks after 

 the plough every spring. The farmer counts the com 

 stolen, however, and puts a price on the robber's head. Yet 

 he knows that corn, dipped in tar before it is put in the 

 ground, will be left alone to sprout. But who is clever 

 enough to keep the crows out of the field in autumn? If 

 the ox that treadeth out the corn is entitled to his share 

 of it, ought not. the crows who saved it from grasshoppers, 

 cutworms. May beetles and other pests, be sharers in the 

 profits? Granted (very reluctantly by some); but what 

 about eating the farmer's young chickens and turkeys as 

 well as the eggs and young of little song birds ? At times, it 

 must be admitted, the crow's heart is certainly as black as 

 his feathers; he is as black as he is painted, but happily 

 such cannibaUsm is apt to be rare. Strange that a bird so 

 tenderly devoted to his own fledglings, should be so heart- 

 less to others' ! 



Toward the end of winter, you may see a pair of crows 

 carrying sticks and trash to the top of some tall tree in the 

 leafless woods, and there, in this bulky cradle, resembling 

 a squirrel's nest, they raise their family. Young crows 

 may be easily tamed and they make interesting, but very 

 mischievous pets. It is only when crows are nesting that 

 they give up their social, flocking habit and the settling of 

 their affairs in noisy public debates. 



In winter, if the fields be lean, large picturesque flocks 



