American crow

“ Yet crows are great scavengers. In the spring they get a great many insects and moths from the ground, and do good work in picking up those large white grubs with red heads that work such destruction in some of our mowing fields.
Mr. Pratt stated that he had used coal tar on his seed corn for five or six years, and had never a spear pulled by the crows. Dr. Riggs never had known a crow to touch corn after it got to the second tier of leaves. Mr. Lockwood said crows would sample a whole field of corn to find corn not tarred. ”

“ The Crow breeds from April to June, varying with the latitude of its residence. In Massachusetts it has full-grown young by June 1. It builds, usually in March, a large rudely constructed nest of sticks, moss, and bark, lined with finer [Pg 247] mosses, and sometimes with hair. The parent birds are very watchful and vigilant if their nest is in danger, and often expose their lives in their anxiety for their young. The male bird is attentive to his mate during incubation, and assists in feeding the young. The young are fed chiefly on insects, frogs, mice, and similar food. ”

“ There is no doubt the crow is a damage to the agriculturist. He preys upon the cornfield and eats the corn indiscriminately, whether there are any insects or not. That has been proved by dissection of stomach and crop.
If corn can be protected by tarring, so that the crows will not eat it, they will prove a benefit by leaving the corn and picking up grubs in the field. Where corn has been tarred, I have never known the crows to touch it. ”

“ In the Central States, especially in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, they are much more abundant, and render themselves conspicuous and dreaded by the farmers through the extent of their depredations on the crops. The evil [Pg 217] deeds of all birds are ever much more noticed and dwelt upon than their beneficial acts. So it is, to an eminent degree, with the Crow Blackbird. Very few seem aware of the vast amount of benefit it confers on the farmer, but all know full well—and are bitterly prejudiced by the knowledge—the extent of the damages this bird causes. ”

“ During the month of May the Crow is very destructive in the cornfield, pulling up the grains as soon as they begin to vegetate, and compelling the farmer to replant perhaps several times. Wilson remarks that in the State of Delaware these birds collect in immense flocks and commit great devastation upon crops of standing corn. They also occasionally commit depredations in the barn-yard, robbing hens’-nests of their eggs, and even destroying young chickens. They also destroy the eggs and young of other birds. ”

“ When taken young, the Crow can be easily domesticated, and becomes a very entertaining, but a very mischievous pet. It is very secretive, hiding objects of no value to itself, and seems to delight in mischief. It displays often a wonderful intelligence, appears to understand and to obey certain directions, and manifests also remarkable quickness of vision. A tame Crow belonging to a family resident near Boston, and permitted to go at large, manifested all the attachment of a dog. ”

“ The Common Crow of North America is found in great abundance in all the Eastern States, from Texas to Florida, and from the Missouri to Nova Scotia. A few are found beyond the Great Plains, and they also extend their migrations, in summer, into high Arctic regions. Richardson found them as far north as the 55th parallel, but was in error when he stated that beyond this they do not go. ”

“ One cannot but admire his strength and his absolute fearlessness, nor fail to be amused at his cleverness and his insolent bravado. Two or three crows, cawing hoarsely, will people a woodland in winter; while a flock, winging its way to the naked March woods, will cause a thrill of joy and expectancy, in spite of the knowledge that the advent of these black marauders means eternal vigilance to long-suffering farmers.
Dr. Sylvester D. Judd at Marshall Hall, Maryland, made an exhaustive study of the crow’s food habits. ”

“ An egg of this species, from Trout Creek, Texas, obtained June 20 by Charles S. McCarthy, measures 1.75 inches in length by 1.25 in breadth. The ground-color is a light grayish-green, and is pretty uniformly marked with fine dottings of mingled purple and brown.
Corvus americanus, Aud.
COMMON CROW.
Corvus corone, Wilson, Am. Orn. IV, 1811, 79 pl. xxv, f. 3.—Bon. Obs. Wils. 1824, No. 37.—Ib. Syn. 1828, 56.—Rich. F. B. Am. II, 1831, 291.—Nuttall, Man. I, 1832, 209 (not Corvus corone ofLinn.) . Corvus americanus, Aud. Orn. Biog. II, 1834, 317; V, 477, pl. clvi.—Ib. Syn. 1839, 150.—Ib. Birds Am. ”

“ Little is known of the distribution of fruit seeds by crows during migration, but it is certain that they do this work effectively while they fly to and from the roosts where they congregate in winter, for their feeding grounds often cover an area stretching out on all sides from the roosts 17 for 50 miles or more. It appears highly probable that the crows which are found in winter at Marshall Hall roost at Woodbridge, D. C., some 15 miles distant. There, in the midst of several acres of woodland, a crow dormitory is established, in which probably 100,000 crows sleep every winter night. ”

“ They always disappear in the spring to fulfill the great law of increase and multiplication, but, strange to say, a crow's nest is a comparatively rare sight in the Virginia or Maryland woods, and as far as the writer is advised, it is the same in the neighboring states. The farmers are unrelenting enemies of the crows, and they never neglect an opportunity for their destruction, and the sagacious birds, knowing this by instinct and experience, no doubt, take special pains to protect their young by rearing them in the least accessible places. ”

“ If we have an eye for the picturesque, we place a certain value upon the broad, strong dash of color in the landscape, given by a flock of crows flapping their course above a corn-field, against an October sky; but the practical eye of the farmer looks only for his gun in such a case. To him the crow is an unmitigated nuisance, all the more maddening because it is clever enough to circumvent every means devised for its ruin. Nothing escapes its rapacity; fear is unknown to it. ”

“ In fact none of our native birds so much concerns the average farmer of the Eastern States as the common crow. Many of our present criticisms of this bird, as its pulling sprouting corn, feeding on ripening ears, damaging fruits of various kinds, destroying poultry and wild birds, and disseminating diseases of live stock, were common complaints in the days of the early colonists. ”

“ In winter, when cereal stores and acorns which supply the season's want lie buried in the snow, and when such animals as in youth were ready prey have grown to a more formidable majority, crows frequently suffer and perish from hunger, and when snows lie long on the ground many of them are found dead beneath their roosting places.
The voice of the crow when heard distinctly has in it something of the winter's harshness and seems to harmonize best with winter sounds—creaking boughs and shrieking winds—but when modulated by distance it is not unmusical. ”

“ The first eggs are laid very early, sometimes by the second week in April. A nest recently analysed consisted mainly of green ash taken from faggots and cuttings in the wood. One piece was a yard long, and as thick at the base as the little finger. The nest was felted with cow's hair, and quite impenetrable to shot. These nests last for years, and often have a series of tenants, kestrels, squirrels, brown owls, or hobbies. If the first nest is destroyed, the crow makes another. In his conjugal relations the carrion crow is a model bird. He pairs for life, and is inseparable from his mate. ”

“ In estimating the economic status of the crow, it must be acknowledged that he does some damage, but, on the other hand, he should receive much credit for the insects which he destroys. In the more thickly settled parts of the country the crow probably does more good than harm, at least when ordinary precautions are taken to protect young poultry and newly-planted corn against his depredations. ”

“ All birds increase in numbers about settlements,—even the crow, though he is a forest bird too. Hence, no doubt, has arisen the notion that the crow (supposed to be of the same species with the European) made his appearance in this country first on the Atlantic coast, and gradually spread westward, passing through the State of New York about the time of the Revolution. ”

“ I did not then know that crows are nest-robbers, like the jay, or that the smallest bird at the table was ready to bristle his feathers if one of the black bandits approached too near.
For several days, while the crows grew pinched, I waited expectantly for hunger to tame them, only to learn that a crow never ventures into a flock of smaller birds, being absurdly afraid of their quickness of wing and temper. Then, because any hungry thing always appealed to me, I spread a variety of food, scraps of meat and the [45] entrails of fish or fowl, on a special table at a distance ”

“ For, as you no doubt have heard, a crow thinks no more of helping himself to an egg of a wild bird than we [Pg 104] do of visiting the nests of tame birds, such as hens and geese and turkeys, and taking the eggs they lay. Of course, it would not occur to a crow that he didn't have a perfect right to take such food for himself and his young as he could find in his day's hunting. Indeed, it is not unlikely that, if a crow did any real thinking about the matter, he might decide that robins and meadowlarks were his chickens anyway. ”

“ Compared with the common crow, with which it is often confounded, the fish crow is of much smaller, more slender build. Thus its flight is less labored and more like a gull's, whose habit of catching fish that may be swimming near the surface of the water it sometimes adopts. Both Audubon and Wilson, who first made this species known, record its habit of snatching food as it flies over the southern waters—a rare practice at the north. Its plumage, too, differs slightly from the common crow's in being a richer black everywhere, and particularly underneath, where the "corn thief" is dull. ”

“ In open winters crows fare well enough. Seeds and berries are easy to get and considerable grain may be found in harvested fields. But like barnyard fowls, crows are omnivorous. After the grasshoppers disappear, a supply of animal food is hard to get. The silken egg-sacs of spiders are often found torn open and rifled, while suspiciously near by are the tracks of crows. Undoubtedly rabbits and field mice would unite with the spiders in declaring the crow to be their deadly enemy.
That crows eat corn is undeniable. ”

“ It wouldn’t be long before fall would be here, I thought, and that lonely old crow would join about five hundred of his black-feathered friends and spend half the day everyday, for a while, cawing and cawing in his hoarse voice, keeping it up and keeping it up, hour after hour in the bare trees. One of the dreariest things a farm boy ever sees in the autumn, is a forlorn-looking crow flapping his sad wings above the frosty cornfields. ”

“ There is another way in which the crows' love of variety is manifest, though in a much more dignified way. Occasionally a flock may be surprised sitting about in the trees, deeply absorbed in watching a performance—generally operatic—by one of their [Pg 107] number. The crow's chief note is the hoarse haw, haw with which everybody is familiar, and which seems capable of expressing everything, from the soft chatter of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud derision with which he detects all ordinary attempts to surprise him. ”

“ At times, it must be admitted, the crow's heart is certainly as dark as his feathers; he is as black as he is painted, but happily such cannibalism is apt to be rare. Strange that a bird so tenderly devoted to his own fledglings, should be so heartless to others'!
Toward the end of winter, you may see a pair of crows carrying sticks and trash to the top of some tall tree in the leafless woods, {155} and there, in this bulky cradle, almost as bulky as a squirrel's nest, they raise their family. Young crows may be easily tamed and they make interesting, but very mischievous pets. ”

“ Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well, and the deer and the fox and many other creatures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly, or at least a part of it which concerns their own welfare. Thus, on the seacoast in winter you hear the crows hawing continually as they follow the tide-line in search of food. For hours this talk goes on, loudly or sleepily, and the wild ducks pay absolutely no attention to it; though they must know well that hungry crows will kill a wounded or careless duck and eat him to the bones whenever they have a chance. ”

“ Nature has few birds or animals upon her varied list with which we would find fault, but the crow,—well, having nothing to say in its favor, let us drop the subject. Parrots, paroquets, tiny indigo birds, pedorevas, and robins,—yes, these are all in harmony with mingled fragrance and sunshine, but the coal-black crow, with his bad habits and hoarse bird-profanity, bah! ”

“ See yonder carrion crows, how they sweep down on those spots of heather which are populous with nests and young ones! And what a delicious titbit for stoat and weasel do the day-old ‘cheepers’ afford! Many a gallant battle will be fought by the male grouse on behalf of his mate and her eggs, as he does not hesitate to defend them from the greedy crow, nor is afraid even of the bloodsucking weasel. Whenever danger threatens the home of his little family, the cock-grouse is up in arms, ready to do all he can for the protection of madame and her chicks. ”