RELATION TO OTHER NATIVE BIRDS. 41 



DESTRUCTION OF EGGS AND YOUNG OF WILD BIRDS. 



The older American naturalists speak of the Crow as one of the well- 

 known enemies of the smaller wild birds. Audubon, after describing 

 the Crow's attacks on the poultry yard, simply remarks : " It is as fond 

 of the eggs of other birds as is the cuckoo.'* 1 Wilson 2 says: "In 

 spring, when he makes his appearance among the groves and low 

 thickets, all the feathered songsters are instantly alarmed, well know- 

 ing the depredations and murders he commits on their nests, eggs, 

 and young." 



Kuttall supposed the Crows of America, Europe, Asia, and even 

 Australia to belong to one and the same species, and his remarks about 

 their destroying eggs and young birds appear to have been based on a 

 knowledge of the habits of the English Carrion Crow (Corvus corone), 

 which is said to be particularly fond of the eggs and young of the 

 European partridge. Dr. Brewer, 3 as late as 1874, wrote as follows : 

 "They also occasionally commit depredations in the barnyard, robbing 

 hens' nests of their eggs, and even destroying young chickens. They 

 also destroy the eggs and young of other birds." 



In 1867 Mr. E. A. Samuels, then State Ornithologist of Massachu- 

 setts, published, in his ' Birds of Eew England,' a somewhat lengthy 

 discussion of the Crow's economic status, in which he threw out of the 

 account every charge against the bird save that of the destruction of 

 the eggs and young of wild birds, and yet concluded that the damage 

 done in that way alone outweighed the good done in all ways combined 

 at least 20 to 1. In making this estimate, which probably represents 

 the extreme of exaggeration on this side of the question, Samuels 

 states that he has seen a pair of Crows, in two visits to an orchard, 

 within a half hour destroy the young birds in two robins' nests. This 

 doubtless is perfectly true, for such occurrences are not very rare; but 

 that does not justify the further statement that " it is perfectly reason- 

 able to say that it destroys [each day in May] at least the eggs or young 

 of one pair of sparrows, four in number; one pair of warblers, four in 

 number, and one pair of thrushes or starlings, four in number." 4 It 

 may be reasonably doubted whether any pair of Crows in America ever 

 averaged anything like the above slaughter, even for a single week, 

 while Mr. Samuels considers this only an average day's work for May, 

 and allows double the amount for the whole of June and the first half 

 of July. 



1 Ornithological Biography, II, 1835, 319. Audubon, in common with a majority 

 of writers on birds, credited the stories that cuckoos eat the eggs of other birds. 

 The charge is a time-honored one, but from all the evidence now available, it seems to 

 be groundless. — W. B. B. 



2 American Ornithology, Edinburgh ed., Vol. I, 1831, p. 245. 



3 Hist. North Am. Birds, II, 1874, p. 245. 



4 See also Rept. Comm. Agriculture for 1867, p. 207 and Samuels' Our Northern 

 and Eastern Birds, 1883, p. 300. 



