54 BIRDS OF A MARYLAND FARM. 



1899, some notes were made on the manner in which a carcass was 

 disposed of. On the edge of lot 1, near the mouth of Persimmon 

 Branch, lay a horse that had died two weeks before. Fully 30 buz- 

 zards closely attended it, and some were to be found at work on it at 

 any hour of the day, while the others, tired of goro-ing. sat around 

 on a rail fence, stretching their wings and preening. At night they 

 all roosted together in oak trees within a hundred yards of the horse, 

 as if they wished to keep near the food. A year later another horse was 

 given over to the buzzards. The buzzards did not in either case tear 

 open the skin to expose the large muscles, but if the weather had been 

 hot they might have eaten these as well as viscera. Crows are seldom 

 known to feed on dead stock, but during the March blizzard of 1S98 

 the}" were almost starved, and resorted with buzzards to a dead cow. 

 Buzzards dispose of the entrails and other refuse of pigs, fish, and 

 chickens, which are thrown to them in a certain place where they 

 have learned to expect it. 



MAMMALS. 



Mice. — The crow and several other birds of the farm do some good 

 by destroj^ing injurious mammals. In the vicinity of t\ie storage barn 

 a loggerhead shrike was often to be seen. Here it impaled its prey on 

 thorns of the osage orange hedge and on the barbs of a wire fence. In 

 one instance a house mouse was found spitted on the fence. If extended 

 observations could have been made it is probable that mice would often 

 have been found in the larder of this useful little shrike. The crow 

 takes mice at every opportunity. On February 21. 1900, signs of its 

 work appeared near the runways of meadow mice in a wheat-stubble 

 patch of lot 5, in the form of crow tracks in the light snow, holes 

 pecked in the earth, and at one place spatters of blood and tufts of 

 mouse hair. Hawks feed habitually on these mice. In January", 

 1898, when there were several inches of snow on the ground, a red- 

 tailed hawk (PI. X, fig. 1) shot in the road by the negro cabin held in 

 its talons the warm body of a meadow mouse. November 15, 1900, a 

 marsh hawk skimming over lot 2 suddenly dived into the brown broom- 

 sedge. As it rose it was killed and a meadow mouse dropped from its 

 clutch. In its stomach the head and hind quarters of another were 

 found. This species of hawk is undoubtedly the most useful mouser 

 on the farm and should have due credit, for mice cause much injury 

 there to fruit trees, sweet potatoes, and grain. The short-eared owl 

 (PI. X, fig. 2) has several times been observed preying upon meadow 

 mice. This bird, the marsh hawk, and the red-shouldered hawk, which 

 are all excellent mousers and rarely attack poultry or birds, are con- 

 tinualh" made to pay with their lives for the depredations of the real 

 poultr}^ thieves of the hawk and owl tribe — the Cooper and sharp- 

 shmned hawks and the great horned owl. The illustration of a short- 



