30 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS 



communication-sounds of their own than other 

 birds. Like Kipling's Marines, they think for 

 themselves and they steal for themselves, and 

 they never ask what's to do. Out of the stark, 

 comfortless fields of winter 'or out of the snowy 

 forest he wrings a living by dint of sheer clever- 

 ness and skill, with a facility that recalls another 

 of Kipling's lines — "Yon can leave 'im at night 

 on a bald man's 'ead, to paddle 'is own canoe!" 

 Bare indeed is the glistening expanse of snow 

 above which he cannot find a morsel — a chestnut 

 forgotten in its burr, a chinquapin, a pod of field- 

 peas missed by the last gleaner, or an unwary 

 fieldmouse that has ventured too far from home. 



But whether employing his talents in mis- 

 chief, in noisy treetop caucuses, or in the winter 

 search for food in which success is life or death 

 to him, the Crow comforts himself with a queer 

 sardonic nonchalance worthy of an Indian's dig- 

 nity. Buccaneer of the crop and pirate of the 

 nest although he be, his numbers are no longer 

 so formidable as they were a generation ago, 

 and he remains a feature of our native landscape 

 that could not well be spared. 



No nestlings are noisier than young Crows; 

 they do not seem to care who knows the location 

 of their great brushy nest — and indeed it would 

 be hard to conceal that bushel of crooked twigs, 

 conspicuous in a treetop. Their feeding- time is 



