AMERICAN CROW 233 



pickerel are not fed, it is. It had even visited, on the 

 wing, a hole, now frozen and snowed up, which I made 

 far from this in the middle of the pond several days 

 since, as I discovered by its droppings, the same kind 

 that it had left about the first holes. 



I brought home and examined some of the droppings 1 

 of the crow mentioned [above] . They were brown and 

 dry, though partly frozen. After long study with a mi- 

 croscope, I discovered that they consisted of the seeds 

 and skins and other indigestible parts of red cedar 

 berries and some barberries (I detected the imbricated 

 scale-like leaves of a berry stem and then the seeds 

 and the now black skins of the cedar berries, but easily 

 the large seeds of the barberries) and perhaps some- 

 thing more, and I knew whence it had probably come, 

 i. e. from the cedar woods and barberry bushes by 

 Flint's Pond. These, then, make part of the food of 

 crows in severe weather when the snow is deep, as at 

 present. 



Jan. 24, 1856. I knew that a crow had that day 

 plucked the cedar berries and barberries by Flint's 

 Pond and then flapped silently through the trackless 

 air to Walden, where it dined on fisherman's bait, 

 though there was no living creature to tell me. 



Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, 

 with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet 



1 [Evidently the pellets of indigestible matter which the crow, in 

 common with hawks, owls, gulls, and some other birds, disgorges from 

 time to time.] 



