“When morning comes they leave the roost, and, breaking up into parties, begin the search for food again. As the supply near home gives out, they go farther and farther afield, sometimes going down to the shore, where they pick up clams, mussels, and any scraps of sea-food that they can find.
“After the corn has been taken in, they find scattered kernels of that and other grain left in the field, but at the first snowfall hard times set in for the Crow. He cannot search the bark crevices for insects like the small tree-trunk birds with slender bills; people do not welcome him to their farm-yards and scatter grain for him, or leave him free to glean, as they do the other winter birds. It is at this time, when the hand of man is turned against him, that the Crow really works in man’s interest by catching meadow-mice and many other small destructive animals.
“At this time, the Crow eats frozen apples, poison-ivy berries, acorns, beech and chestnuts, and the like. But now he grows poor and thin and his voice is querulous, and from November to March the Crow is put to it for a living. ‘Poor as a Crow’ is an apt saying.
Then it is a distant cawing, Growing louder—coming nearer, Tells of crows returning inland From their winter on the marshes.
Iridescent is their plumage, Loud their voices, bold their clamour. In the pools and shallows wading, Or in overflowing meadows Searching for the waste of winter— Scraps and berries freed by thawing. Weird their notes and hoarse their croaking Silent only when the night comes.
“With the thawing out of the ground in spring, the Crow begins to view the world differently. The search for insects still continues, and the corn now gleaned is more palatable, for it has been well soaked, and though a corn-eater by nature, the Crow does not like his too hard and dry.
“The flock life of the roost now ends. Every Jack chooses his Jill, and mingled with the harsh warning cries of the older birds are sounds that sometimes have a suggestion that their makers are trying to sing. The funniest thing in birdland is to see a Crow or a Purple Grackle making love, standing on tiptoe on a branch, raising their wings by jerks, like pump-handles that are stiff, while the sounds they make stick in the throat in a manner that suggests Crow croup.