Crow

a family of birds which includes the jay and the raven. There are said to be two hundred species. The crow is proverbially black. The common crow nests from Mexico to Hudson Bay, retiring into the southern half of its range in winter. It builds in a tree a bulky nest of twigs, strings, shreds of grapevine, leaves, grasses, and moss, from twenty to thirty feet up. Eggs, four to six, bluish green, often mixed with shades of brown. The crow is nearly twenty inches in length. Were it not for his determination to have all the seed corn when planted, and a heavy rental when the corn is mature, the crow's natural diet of insects, seeds, snails, grubs, and caterpillars would cause the farmer no uneasiness.

The crow is a wary bird. A flock of crows feeds always in charge of a sentinel, at whose warning caw there is no delay in winging to a place of safety. Apparently familiar and bold, the crow learned, generations since, to tell the difference between a man and a man with a gun; yet is often imposed upon and kept away from a cornfield by a scarecrow hat and an old hay-stuffed coat ingeniously disposed on a pole. It is said that a crow can count as far as three; for if three persons enter a cornfield to lie in wait with guns the crows will remain in distant tree-tops till three persons have gone out again; but that, if the number of persons who enter in a group exceeds three, the crows lose count and approach the corn after three persons have gone away.

The self assured kaw, kaw, kaw, of the crow, when it has nothing to fear, is capable of considerable variation; and ingenious argument has been expended to prove that the crows have an intelligible though limited vocabulary. When on a journey, or when flying between its roost and feeding ground, the crow takes a straight course; which has passed into the convenient expression of distance measured "as the crow flies." Lowell emphasizes the delights of early summer with a characteristic, "The crows flapped over by twos and threes." In winter the northern crows go south and gather together in large roosts, some of which Mr. Rhoads, writing in the American Naturalist, has estimated as containing over 300,000 birds.

A disagreeable habit of devouring the eggs of small birds has left the crow few feathered friends, but it seems to thrive under modern conditions. "I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet and good wherever I am. The crow is a character I would not willingly miss from the landscape," says Burroughs.

The Florida crow is a smaller southern species of the pine woods. The fish crow is smaller than the common crow and, if there be any difference, blacker. It is no fonder of seashore winter diet than its relatives, but is seldom found far inland. With the exception of black in its wings and tail, the Clark crow is white. It nests in the high pine trees of the Rocky Mountains. British species are the rook, the jackdaw, the carrion crow, and the chough.

See Jay