Crows eat fruit to some extent, but confine themselves for the most part to wild species, such as dogwood, sour gum, and seeds of the different kinds of sumac. They have also a habit of sampling almost everything which appears eatable, especially when food is scarce. For example, they eat frozen apples found on the trees in winter, or pumpkins, turnips, and potatoes which have been overlooked or neglected; even mushrooms are sometimes taken, probably in default of something better.
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. If, however, corn is planted with no provision against possible marauders, if hens and turkeys are allowed to nest and to roam with their broods at a distance from farm buildings, losses must be expected.
[THE BOBOLINK, OR RICEBIRD.]
(Dolichconyx oryzivorus)
The bobolink ([fig. 9]) is a common summer resident of the United States, north of about latitude 40°, and from New England westward to the Great Plains, wintering beyond our southern border. In New England there are few birds, if any, around which so much romance has clustered; in the South none on whose head so many maledictions have been heaped. The bobolink, entering the United States from the South at a time when the rice fields are freshly sown, pulls up the young plants and feeds upon the seed. Its stay, however, is not long, and it soon hastens northward, where it is welcomed as a herald of summer. During its sojourn in the Northern States it feeds mainly upon insects and small seeds of useless plants; but while rearing its young, insects constitute its chief food, and almost the exclusive diet of its brood. After the young are able to fly, the whole family gathers into a small flock and begins to live almost entirely upon vegetable food. This consists for the most part of weed seeds, since in the North these birds do not appear to molest grain to any great extent. They eat a few oats, but their stomachs do not reveal a great quantity of this or any other grain. As the season advances they gather into larger flocks and move southward, until by the end of August nearly all have left their breeding grounds. On their way they frequent the reedy marshes about the mouths of rivers and on the inland waters of the coast region, subsisting largely upon wild rice. After leaving the Northern States they are commonly known as reed birds, and having become very fat are treated as game.
They begin to arrive on the rice fields in the latter part of August, and during the next month make havoc in the ripening crop. It is unfortunate that the rice districts lie exactly in the track of their fall migration, since the abundant supply of food thus offered has undoubtedly served to attract them more and more, until most of the bobolinks bred in the North are concentrated with disastrous effect on the south east coast when the rice ripens in the fall, there was evidently a time when no such supply of food awaited the birds on their journey southward, and it seems probable that the introduction of rice culture in the South, combined with the clearing of the forests in the North, thus affording a larger available breeding area, has favored an increase in the numbers of this species. The food habits of the bobolink are not necessarily easily inimical to the interests of agriculture. It simply happens that the rice affords a supply of food more easily obtainable than did the wild plants which formerly occupied the same region. Were the rice fields at a distance from the line of migration, or north of the bobolinks' breeding ground, they would probably never be molested; but lying, as they do, directly in the path of migration, they form a recruiting ground, where the birds can rest and accumulate flesh and strength for the long sea flight which awaits them in their course to South America.
