64 
BIRDS OF DURHAM AND VICINITY. 
Corvus americanus. American Crow. 488. 
Crows live in this corner of the state the year round. They breed 
here in abundance, make this a rendezvous during the migration sea- 
sons, and a small flock, ranging from six to twelve, remain in this 
immediate neighborhood every winter. They always find food along 
the salt rivers at low tide, even when other sources fail, and it is the 
usual sight to see them flying toward the river early in the morning, 
and seeking the pines again at night during the fall and winter. The 
great wave of migration passes southward about November i, and 
northward late in March. Crows are eminently social, and arc models 
of propriety in their intercourse with one another. I do not remember 
ever to have seen two crows fighting, but though harmony is their rule, 
there are exceptions to it, as the following incident related by Mr. 
Albert Demeritt shows : One spring morning Mr. Demeritt was 
walking on his farm and saw two crows in combat in a field. He 
approached and found them locked in an embrace that was anything 
but fond. Each had a claw in the other's eye, and was holding his 
grip with true bull-dog tenacity. Hatred had banished fear, and they 
were picked up, carried to the house and exhibited to the members of 
the family before they released their holds. Crows have a regular 
roosting place to v/hich they repair every night. There was a roost 
early last fall in the dense growth of small white oaks on the left bank 
of Oyster river near its mouth. Later, they came nearer the village to 
some pines nc:\v the Burnham farm on the road to Durham Point. 
They were in the liabit of roosting close together, and some nights I 
found nearly the whole flock, about thirty, in the same tree. A crow 
that had been " winged" fell into my hands in April, 1898, and I kept 
him a few days with the intention of getting some idea of his food 
capacity. He was confined in a small box, 13x20 inches. Besides a 
supply of corn and oats, which I kept before him all the time, I fur- 
nished him as many earthworms — twenty to sixty per day — as I could 
conveniently procure. After five days I varied his fare with the small 
minnows {Fundiilus^ so abundant in the creeks. He evidently had a 
taste for fish, for he devoured them greedily. When he had been 
mine a w^eek I began a three days' experiment. During this week he 
had become quite tame, and frequently ate in my presence. For the 
two days preceding the experiment his food was largely fish, which 
was the only kind of suitable food that I could find in sufficient quan- 
tity. I laid in a stock of 412 grams of minnows, which I kept alive 
and allowed Corvus to catch for himself from a basin of water. At 
