Birds The Crow 
other insects, snakes, toads, frogs, mice, etc. It is 
also partial to the nestlings of other birds when it finds 
them. It feeds upon a large variety of wild berries, 
and is particularly fond of sprouting corn. Its lik- 
ing for the last-named delicacy, and its clever ways 
of obtaining it, have served to show how shrewd the 
crow really is. 
Next to the raccoon, the crow is the most mischiev- 
ous of pets, and at the same time the most interesting. 
It isnecessary to take a crow when a fledgling in order 
to bring it up successfully as a pet; although there 
have been records of crows that were injured, and thus 
captured and fed, becoming quite tame, yet the 
young bird is the more apt learner. 
The crow’s propensity for stealing all bright and 
shining objects makes it rather dangerous to allow 
the bird the freedom of the house. Thimbles, jew- 
elry, pins and needles it steals to carry off and bury 
or hide in some secluded spot. Mr. Thompson- 
Seton in his story of ‘Silver Spot,” gives a most inter- 
esting account of the crow’s aesthetic interest in 
glittering objects. However, it is not always the 
glittering object that attracts, for a pet crow of our 
acquaintance was so in the habit of stealing the 
clothes-pins off the line, that he was kept in confine- 
ment on wash day. 
The crow is not only intelligent, but very imita- 
tive, and therefore may be taught many tricks. Mr. 
Lottridge writes of a crow taught to hop over sticks, 
jump through a hoop, hold a pipe in the beak, and to 
pretend it had a broken wing. The writer’s exper- 
ience with tame crows has been confined to two, Joe 
and Billy. Joe was the pet of a farmer, and particu- 
larly enjoyed helping about the farm work. He al- 
ways assisted in digging the potatoes by keeping 
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