238 
HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 
liisfood down with his claws while eating, doubles 
his head under until the strength of the upper 
beak is brought to bear directly against that of 
the claws, the movement being upward and back¬ 
ward and striking in toward the body. Neither 
the claws nor the beak of the crow is capable of 
any thing of this kind. The disposition to store 
what is not wanted at the moment is observable 
in almost all birds and'animals which have been 
trained. I once knew a tame raccoon which 
would thrust his paw into your pocket and pull 
out money which he would hide under the car¬ 
pet, and yet he was by no means miserly or even 
provident, for he never laid by any thing for win¬ 
ter except his own person, which he used to roll 
up and deposit in the haymow. And a tamed 
crow will sooner carry away the bright piece of 
a broken dish than any thing it might contain. 
It may be asked what does the crow find to 
eat if not his winter stores. We certainly can 
not uridertake to provide half a pound of flesh or 
its equivalent, but we can mention many arti¬ 
cles by which he is fed : carrion, offal, the pick¬ 
ings of barn-yards and highways, frozen apples 
which hang all winter upon seedling trees, the 
berries of bitter-sweet, basswood, and sumach, 
the seeds of grass, golden-rod, or seeds of any 
kind, chestnuts, frost-grapes, the eggs of insects 
in rough bark, all serve in times of want to make 
up his winter bill of fare. 
Our resident birds, and others which perform 
their migrations by short flights, appear to ob¬ 
serve but little order in the flock; but Arctic 
birds, in their long overland journeys, always pre¬ 
serve the form of an acute-angled triangle, or, 
according to the common saying, “like an old- 
fashioned harrow.” Birds dislike to fly before 
a wind, as it then catches and ruffles their feath¬ 
ers, and this wedge-like form is best adapted to 
obviating the resistance of a head-wind. The 
leader only encounters the full force, every other 
bird being shielded by his predecessor, and also 
assisted by the forward motion of the air as a 
boat in the wake of others needs much.less pro¬ 
pelling power. The leader, however, does not 
retain his post during the whole passage, but be¬ 
coming weary with greater labor allows the oth¬ 
ers to pass over and himself falls back in the 
rear, while the next assumes the leadership. 
“Utter confusion of the flock at the loss of the 
leader” is probably imaginary, for it will often 
resolve itself into divisions without confusion, 
each preserving its peculiar wedge-like form. 
Nothing can be more marked or distinct than 
the differences among birds in their manner of 
flying, and not only can the various species be 
thus readily detected as far as they can be well 
seen, but also the destination and purpose of the 
flock, or of single birds, may be correctly guessed 
in the same way. Whenever they approach a 
wood or water, where they will alight, there is 
a peculiar change in the flying, in the shape of 
the flock, in the relative position of the individ¬ 
ual birds, while yet a great way off and before 
the line of flight is yet altered. When the hawk 
is sailing in the air he is not on business, only 
taking an airing, nor yet when perched on some 
staff in the dead top of a tall tree, looking for 
all the world like the standard of the Tenth Le¬ 
gion ; but when “he hasteth to his prey” he 
skirts swiftly and silently below the level of the 
wood, or, sitting on the lower boughs, he watch¬ 
es like a guerrilla sharp-shooter, keen and dan¬ 
gerous. He never descends from great heights 
directly upon his prey; there is no stunning 
shock from the momentum of a descent; it is 
the converging clutch of those terrible talons, 
which contract and close with force as to a nat¬ 
ural position when the bird is dead, which does 
the work. I have seen the hawk strike his prey 
many times, and the position in seizing w'as pre¬ 
cisely that of alighting. The vulture will some¬ 
times, it is said, shoot down from the summits 
of the Andes to the very brink of the sea, pass¬ 
ing through the climate of three zones and the 
most abrupt barometrical changes in as many 
minutes; and the hawk and eagle sometimes 
glide down from inconsiderable heights, but not 
directly upon their prey. I have seen a flock 
of pigeons sit for an hour in a dry tree, engaged 
on their morning toilet, while a hawk was sail¬ 
ing over the woods at no great distance, each in 
full view of the other. The power of eyesight 
of birds thus on the look-out is truly wonderful. 
You may sometimes see a domestic turkey, 
when leading her young into the fields, with 
one eye turned upward to the sky, and utter¬ 
ing a low and continuous sound of warning. 
If you look sharply you will discover a hawk at 
a great height and distance, but it was detected 
by the parent bird the instant it entered her vast 
field of vision. 
One hindrance to the communication of fa¬ 
miliar knowledge on the subject of birds is the 
different names by which they are known in 
different places, and this is especially true of 
those intended to be descriptive. Observations 
of professed ornithologists have usually been 
made in the tropical latitudes, since there, in 
the winter season, all the birds may be found 
together except the resident birds of the tem¬ 
perate zones, which are comparatively few in 
number. The names they give us are often those 
of another region, where their habits during the* 
winter are very different from those during the 
summer at their northern homes. Thus we 
should not readily discover in the bobolink of 
our meadows the rice-bunting of Audubon. In 
many instances one common name is as good 
as another, if there were only a common un¬ 
derstanding. What we have called the par¬ 
tridge is sometimes known as the grouse, and 
again the pheasant; and then the name partridge 
is given to a smaller bird which in the Hudson 
valley is usually known as the quail. The for¬ 
mer is about twice as large as the latter—is a 
bird of forests, the latter of fields and bushes; 
the former eats in winter the buds of trees, the 
latter finds his food on the ground, and seldom 
alights even in bushes, bat always on the ground 
I or on fences. The wax-wing, cedar-bird, and 
cherrv-bird are different names for the same in- 
V 
