ulists, romancers—it matters not man’s 
literary stuff, the crow must be painted 
as black as his feathers. Be he jack- 
daw or rook, raven or chough, or just 
plain crow, the bird must suffer for the 
ignorance of man. We who know the 
crow in the fields and woods of his 
habitat may read and smile, for poets 
are inconstant as an April day and 
fickle as a girl on a blue June night. 
N going to nature, to her magic and 
mystery, I look for the picturesque, 
the quality that makes the landscape 
have an eternal appeal. Wild things 
produce this, life in its haunt or abroad 
on unexplainable quest. It’ may be a 
red-tailed hawk, a sun-drenched mar- 
mot, a black snake stretched along the 
branches of a blueberry bush, a turtle 
or a frog or an insect, and of all the 
wild life in its multiple forms none 
can compare with the crow in enhanc- 
‘ing a scene and make it stick in mem- 
ory. The crow receives this honor on 
account of being a wide-ranging bird 
who quests every location to fill an in- 
satiable stomach. He is a forager of 
note, liable to be found in the barnyard 
or the corn field, strutting the country 
road or on the river bars or the vistas 
of green meadows, the pond hidden in 
the granite hills, the depths of the dark- 
est woodlot. Locality means nothing to 
strong wings. Many of these situa- 
‘tions are often barren of life at the 
time of visitations, and a glimpse of 
sable birds provides the stimulus one 
is ever looking for. 
i takes strategy and relentless pa- 
* tience to become acquainted with the 
black clan. The observer may use a 
wolverine cunning plus an Indian-like 
stealthiness in attempting to approach 
to see what a noisy argument is about, 
-and an hour’s hard work only results 
in ridiculous failure. An alert and 
beady-eyed lookout rasps a call of 
warning. There is a clamor of crow- 
ish cries, a thunder of flapping wings, 
and a loose, curiously frightened flock 
rises from the grass or bursts from the 
leafage of the trees. They sweep over 
the fence-marked farmlands and vanish 
beyond the ragged trees. Steal under 
the pine-tree roost some morning be- 
fore daybreak, and when discovery is 
made there is an intruder below, bed- 
lam breaks loose and every bird seeks 
noisy flight like an army retreating in 
Panic-stricken disorder. Catch a crow 
unaware, in a big field or in a lonely 
tree, and he acts the culprit. He twists 
and fidgets nervously, stretches in a 
comical manner, cocks a sardonic head 
and bats a cold beady eye, endeavors 
to make out he cares not for the world 
or men, but a thousand years of prose- 
cution wells forth and overwhelms him 
| 
and he seeks suddenly, in fast time, in 
a ludicrous get-away, the haven and 
refuge speed can give, 
Abroad in the heaving and sweep of 
landscape he may be outrageously 
wicked in his adventurous spirit, may 
own all the vices and virtues imagin- 
able, but at home about the nest he is 
the model bird. At the roost in the 
pines he struts the straight and nar- 
row path of convention, is a perfect 
family bird, a good provider as they say 
in New England, and once mated he 
is fettered for life. He holds strong 
affection for his mate. Their union is 
close and binding, and should one bird 
be swept to death from some cause the 
remaining partner will grieve in true 
fashion, and in some cases the lonely 
bird has been known to return to the 
scene to mourn in a noticeable manner. 
EK. may be feared, hated and con- 
demned beyond the confines of the 
nest, the roost, but at home the crow 
must receive credit, however small and 
chary. He greatly resembles the gentle- 
men adventurers of the old heroic days. 
Under the eyes of his light o’ love he 
has the saintly qualities of a Black 
Robe, but abroad in the miles of earth 
and the song of the enchanting winds 
he has all the vices of the most bloody 
of buccaneers. 
When the young crow becomes heart- 
sick and yearns for a mate, the court- 
ing is a serious affair. He uses cave- 
man tactics and roughs his lady love in 
royal style. There is nothing of a 
tender sentiment present, just a rowdy 
spirit one might expect from a creature 
who leads a wild vagabond existence. 
He rushes at her, mauling and pecking 
and uttering loud cries 
until the watcher hid- 
den down on the ground 
imagines it a quarrel 
instead of a proposal. 
He hisses and blows, 
struts and _ parades, 
sprawls over her and 
pushes her off the limb. 
It is comedy. 
Occasional she re- 
sists, and this seems to please him and 
he proceeds to rough-house her up and 
along the entire tree. Finally she be- 
comes so cowed or frightened or fairly 
forced to accept his advances and says 
the lucky word in crow language, that 
all his wild and boisterous ardor cools 
and he assumes the humility of a love- 
sick. swain. The devil changes to the 
saint, anger turns to tenderness, and 
there on the limb, side by side, he sings 
his love song. This vocal entertain- 
ment will never rock the world nor 
pause the passage of traffic, rather it 
makes the watcher yearn for a gun to 
put the bird out of misery. The suc- 

tion of an old, dry, wooden pump is 
melody compared to his throated ut- 
terances. 
a ILENT, all attention, the lady bird 
listens as though her ears caught 
limpid strains of aeolian sweetness. 
Beak drawn down to his breast he 
sings, lowly, bravely, happy. The black 
rascal is Punch, Puck, a sable faun. 
This is the bird who stands before 
the bar of public opinion. Communities 
split wide open as to the subject of the 
crow and man, and talk becomes as 
wildly exciting as a political meeting 
in the little red school house. No two 
men agree—one argues he has more 
good points than bad, the other swears 
by all the holies and forty years of 
farming granite hills the bird is sired 
in Hades. Superstition runs amuck. 
Myth is rampant. Tradition juts its 
hydra-head in every complaint. If a 
bird is half bad, he is wholly bad— 
that is the verdict of the farmlands. 
Scientific knowledge furnishes the 
fact he enjoys beneficial habits, but 
popular opinion fanned with the fires 
of ignorance makes a hard nut to crack. 
Fact and utter fancy are strange bed- 
fellows. Compared to it the Gordian 
knot was an easy matter. When a bird 
is misunderstood, misinterpreted, mis- 
represented, it is a difficult thing to en- 
deavor to paint him in angelic colors. 
ERE he arrayed in white instead 
of jet feathers it would not be so 
much of a problem. As it is, black is 
the symbol of something sinister and 
diabolic, and allied with an insatiable 
stomach which rebels at nothing eat- 
able living or dead, it becomes a matter 
where the crow is strip- 
ped of its fig-leaf cov- 
ering and stands just a 
crow with a thousand 
years of good and evil 
in his tradition. 
Naturalists say the 
bird must stand or fall, 
and it depends upon the 
evidence of stomach. 
Judge a bird from what 
he eats and he has had a fair trial. 
Observation in the field leads to deep 
things but eyes have not telescopic 
powers, and an old anger plus news of 
crows in the corn field may mean snap 
judgment based on country-side bias. 
Crows in the patch do not mean crows 
are pulling freshly-planted corn—they 
may be hunting beetles and slugs, but 
a hundred-yard glimpse can not tell. 
Crows raiding the robin nests or shyly 
stealing chickens mean one sure thing 
—the eyes of the farmer and the natur- 
alits can not mistake such episodes. It 
is a matter of eyes—eyes probing the 
contents of the stomach. All tigers 
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