78 



THE GAME BREEDER 



few of the more secluded corners of his 

 once great range. The beaver no longer 

 frequents our waterways as in the days 

 gone by. The wild pigeon, whose im- 

 mense flocks some among us still recall, 

 is extinct ; and many others of our native 

 birds and animals have steadily been re- 

 duced in numbers. But the increase m 

 the numbers of a few species has been 

 almost as noteworthy ; and there seems to 

 have been chosen for this group several 

 individuals which can neither claim use- 

 fulness noi" beauty as compared with 

 those which threaten soon to disappear. 

 The most conspicuous bird in this class 

 is the crow, and with everything in his 

 favor, he has flourished and increased 

 prodigiously. No doubt the crow^ was 

 plentiful enough before the settlement of 

 this country, but the conditions under 

 which he lived were not so conducive to 

 his welfare as at the present day. Na- 

 ture had not provided that the crow 

 should predominate excessively over the 

 birds upon which it preys; and we can 

 quite believe that the crows were often 

 put to sore straits in their battle for 

 existence. In other words nature kept 

 them where they belonged. But, man, 

 in his coming, has been their benefactor. 

 He has never molested them to any ex- 

 tent; in fact, he has caused a decrease 

 in their natural enemies; and has pro- 

 vided a constant and various supply of 

 food which is always at the disposal of 

 the black rascals. If any good at all 

 can be accredited to the crow, it is his 

 gift as a scavenger and his appetite for 

 several forms of insect life. As against 

 this he does not hesitate to attack the 

 grain in the stocks ; and I have seen large 

 numbers of them feeding in standing crop 

 and fairly trampling it down in several 

 spots in one field. But it is in the spring 

 and early summer that the crow commits 

 deeds beside which his dingy coat pales 

 and his good deeds are forgotten. Then 

 it is that he takes upon himself the dual 

 role of thief and murderer, and attacks 

 withoiit mercy the eggs and young of 

 other birds helpless to defend their own. 

 He scours the prairies and fields daily 

 for food with which to nourish his unde- 

 serving offspring ; and countless eggs and 

 young of other birds are pillaged to pro- 



vide for the infant cannibals in their 

 nest of sticks. One of the chief sufferers 

 at this season is the nesting prairie chick- 

 en, and by no means a small factor in 

 the decrease of the latter's brood is the 

 robbing of her nest by the crow. When 

 we see the immense numbers of crows 

 which are scattered over the entire coun- 

 try during the nesting season, we cannot 

 but wonder that any of, the chicken 

 broods and eggs escape. Were it not for 

 the patrolling of the prairies by that 

 plucky little corporal, the kingbird, who 

 never hesitates to harass and drive off 

 each and every crow that comes within 

 his beat, this wholesale destruction of 

 young birds and eggs would probably be 

 doubled. We have had a bounty on 

 gophers, and the wolf bounty still exists, 

 and there seems to be no reason why the 

 crow, sooner or later, should not receive 

 his full share of attention, for he com- 

 mits crimes in comparison to which the 

 misdeeds of the others are insignificant. 

 If we need proof of this we need only 

 to consider the thousands upon thousands 

 of the offspring of insect and seed-eating 

 birds which are annually devoured by 

 crows. 



The Goshawk. 



Although the past season (1916) has 

 shown a remarkable increase in the gos- 

 hawks, there is no serious likelihood that 

 they will continue in such numbers. The 

 goshawk is one of the most rapacious 

 of our birds of prey, and seems to often 

 kill other birds from a mere love of 

 killing. Many partridge and prairie 

 chicken succumb to this murderous vil- 

 lain of the air, and as he does not leave 

 the country during the winter months the 

 grouse are never safe from his depreda- 

 tions. Perhaps the scarcity of bush rab- 

 bits also accounts for his unusual num- 

 bers around the settlements. 



The Coyote. 



Robbed, of late, of his staple diet of 

 rabbit, the coyote has been forced to turn 

 to other sources of food supply, and has 

 abnormally preyed upon the grouse and 

 their nests as well as other ground birds. 

 But the recurrent scarcity of rabbits. 



