78 
the chipping sparrow. Then, again, they attack our red- 
winged blackbirds’ nests. The crow is well aware who has 
the gun, and makes his visits early, about 3.30 a.m., as soon 
as signs of life appear. He is out when no gun is at hand. 
This is our greatest enemy to song birds, and a bounty 
ought to he placed on him.” (Edgar C. Clark, Wilbraham, 
Hampden County.) 
The above statements, coming, as they do, from many sec- 
tions of the State, go far to substantiate the claim made by 
some persons that the crow is everywhere the greatest nat- 
ural enemy of the smaller birds. Professor Hodge told me 
that crows had repeatedly robbed robins’ nests in a city lot , 
under his windows, coming very early in the morning, be- 
fore people generally were out of bed. They are just as 
inveterate thieves of the eggs and young of the larger birds. 
Several observers speak of crows taking the eggs and young 
of fowls and turkeys. This is a habit so well known that 
it hardly need be alluded to here, except to show their taste 
for eggs and nestlings. 
Mr. Price, at the Middlesex Fells Eeservation, was raising 
both wild and domesticated ducks and pheasants. He says 
that crows took five out of seven young ducks in one day. 
In June about one hundred Mallard ducks were turned out 
on a small pond. Ducks lay their eggs very early in the 
morning, and every morning crows were seen carrying off 
eggs. Mr. Price says they took about fifty each week, car- 
rying off, altogether, from eight hundred to one thousand 
eggs during the season, taking about all the eggs laid by 
the ducks. 
It is probable that where one instance of crows robbing 
nests is observed, a thousand pass unnoticed. There is 
only one redeeming feature in the case of the crow, and 
that is, that not all crows habitually rob birds’ nests ; for if 
they did, they would destroy most other birds, and in time 
we should have few birds but crows. 
Squirrels. — Forty-two observers regard squirrels as very 
injurious to birds, thus ranking them next to the crow in 
destructiveness, and some regard them as more vicious than 
the crow. Others believe that squirrels do no harm, as 
they have never seen them troubling birds in any way, nor 
