OF VIRGINIA 195 
if left unmolested. They will also take young chickens and 
ducks, as I have had demonstrated to me on my place, 
while large numbers of the smaller birds’ eggs and young 
are destroyed by them. Blackbirds and Kingbirds are the 
Crow’s worst enemies during the summer months, while 
the Purple Martin runs a close third as a Crow chaser. 
Really, I know nothing good of this bird, and instead of 
the counties (several do yet) paving a bounty on hawks, 
eagles and foxes, they would do more good by having it 
on Crows. The nest is rather a bulky affair, though well 
made, of sticks, twigs and coarse bark fiber, lined with 
fine strips of bark fiber and sometimes hair. It is placed 
in a tree, preferably a pine, in thick woods, from twenty 
to sixty feet up, either in the extreme top, or on the cnd 
of a limb. They lay four to six eggs, greenish-white, 
spotted, specked or blotched with lilac or brown. Size, 
1.60x1.15. Fresh eggs March 27th to May 6th. Usually 
two broods a season. During the winter months they 
sometimes flock in great numbers, resorting to a dense 
clump of woods for a roosting place, and returning to 
such a crow roost year after year. During the fall and 
winter such a flock, probably numbering three hundred 
birds, pass daily over my farm and cross the James River, 
which is seven miles wide at that point, and frequent the 
peanut plantations in Isle of Wight County. While the 
crows eat numerous beetles, white grubs, locusts, and 
occasionally field mice, their main diet in owr area is the 
different varieties of grain and peanuts, while in the 
summer months they destroy many cantaloupes and water- 
melons for their seed. They also pick up some food in 
the shape of marine insect life and carrion along our 
beaches, but my observations lead me to believe they are 
much more harmful than beneficial. 
