12 THE? AcU Di BOING 6 Ullal Baie 
FOR MANY YEARS farmers, sportsmen, and ornithologists have been debating 
heatedly about the crow. Most farmers dislike the crow because it damages 
grain fields, particularly spring plantings. Sportsmen have used the crow 
as a target because they have seen evidence of how the birds, which they 
call “black bandits,” destroy the eggs of pheasants, ducks and other game 
birds. Many conservationists and ornithologists have taken the crow’s side 
of the debate because it has been proved that the bird consumes great num- 
bers of insects and thus counterbalances the damage it does to crops and 
game birds. 
This spring the crows did considerable damage in the cornfields on the 
Wheaton farm. We have noted areas in two fields which are barren because 
the crows consumed the corn seeds and seedlings. 
Despite their depredations, however, the men on the Wheaton farm now 
are wondering if the crows shouldn’t be decorated with a few “service bars” 
for their destruction of the grasshoppers. These troublesome insects are 
abundant this year, and the crows are consuming them by the thousands. 
The ring-necked pheasants also are feeding heavily on grasshoppers, and 
even the little bob-white quail probably are consuming a few of these insects. 
But it is the crows which are serving the farmers this season as the major 
devourer of grasshoppers. 
Examinations of the stomachs of all three of these birds prove that the 
hoppers provide a portion of their diet. Several years ago federal biologists 
examined the stomachs of more than 2,100 crows collected in 40 states and 
Canadian provinces. Analysis of these stomachs showed what the birds 
consumed during every month of the year.. It is significant that grass- 
hoppers formed 14 per cent of the crow’s diet in July, 19 per cent in August, 
and 19 per cent in September. In addition, these birds had consumed many 
other harmful insects, including May beetles, ground beetles, and cater- 
pillars. The rest of their diet consisted of corn, other grains, fruits, and 
weed seeds. 
There is a striking similarity in the feeding habits of the crow and the 
ring-necked pheasant. A study by Minnesota scientists showed that 68 
per cent of the ring-necks’ diet during September is corn, mostly waste 
grain which falls to the ground. Eleven per cent of the pheasants’ diet in 
the same month is weed seeds, and 15 per cent is insect life, mainly grass- 
hoppers. 
Quail consume grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles, but these smaller 
birds depend upon vegetable matter for about 85 per cent of their diet. 
From these statistics it isn’t possible to make positive conclusions on 
the merit of campaigns to destroy crows. Sporadic campaigns of shooting, 
trapping, and even dynamiting of the crows’ foosts have not appreciably 
decreased the crow population. Crows are among the most intelligent of 
all birds, as any sportsman knows. 
They are wary of anything unusual in their home woods, and they have 
a system of warning calls which make them among the hardest of all birds 
to decoy.—Ben Markland in “Day by Day on the Farm,” Chicago Daily 
Tribune, Aug. 22, 1948. 
