A crow must require certainly half a pound of animal food, or its equivalent, daily, in order to keep from starving. Yet they not only do not starve that I hear of, but seem to keep in as good case in winter as in summer, though what they find to eat is not immediately apparent. The vague traditional suggestion of "carrion," as of dead horses and the like, does not help us much. Some scraps doubtless may be left lying about, but any reliable stores of this kind are hardly to be looked for in this neighborhood. A few scattered kernels of corn, perhaps on a pinch a few berries, he may pick up; though I suspect the crow is somewhat human in his tastes, and, besides animal food, affects only the cereals. The frogs are deep in the mud. Now and then a squirrel or a mouse may be had; but they are mostly dozing in their holes. As for larger game, rabbits and the like, the crow is hardly nimble enough for them, nor are his claws well adapted for seizing; anything of this kind he will scarcely get, except as the leavings of the weasel or skunk. These he will not refuse; for though he is of a different species from the carrion crow of Europe, with whom he was formerly confounded, yet he is of similar, though perhaps less extreme, tastes as to his food. But when the ground is freshly covered with snow, all supplies of this sort would seem to be cut off, for the time at least. Yet who ever found a starved crow, or even saw one driven by hunger from any of his accustomed caution? He is ever the same alert, vivacious, harsh-tongued wanderer over the white fields as over the summer meadows.
A partial solution of the mystery is to be found in the habit which the bird has in common with most of the crow kind, of depositing any surplus food in a place of safety for future use. A tame crow that I saw last year was constantly employed in this way. As soon as his hunger was satisfied, if a piece of meat was given to him, he flew off to some remote spot, and there covered it up with twigs and leaves. I was told that the woods were full of these caches of his. Bits of bread and the like he was too well-fed to care much about, but he would generally go through the form of covering them, at your very feet, with a little rubbish, not taking the trouble to hide them. Meanwhile his hunting went on as if he still had his living to get, and he would watch for field-mice, or come flying in from the woods with a squirrel swinging from his claws, either for variety's sake, or because he had really forgotten the stores he had laid up. Scattered magazines of this kind, established in times of accidental plenty, may render life during our winters possible to the crow.
But why should he give himself so much trouble to subsist here, when a few hours' work with those broad wings would bear him to a land of tropical abundance? The crow, it seems, is not a mere eating and drinking machine, drawn hither and thither by the balance of supply and demand, but has his motives of another sort. Is it, perhaps, some local attachment, so that a crow hatched in Brookline, for example, would be more loath than another to quit that neighborhood,—a sort of crow patriotism, akin to that which keeps the Greenlanders slowly starving of cold and hunger on that awful coast of theirs.
It is not probable, however, that the crow allows himself to suffer much from these causes; he is far too knowing for that, and shows his position at the head of the bird kind by an almost total emancipation from scruples and prejudices, and by the facility with which he adapts himself to special cases. Instinct works by formulas, which, as it were, make up the animal, so that the ant and the bee are atoms of incarnate constructiveness and acquisitiveness, and nothing else. And as intelligence, when its action is too narrowly concentrated, whether upon pin-making or money-making, tends to degenerate into mere instinct,—-so instinct, when it begins to compare, and to except, and to vary its action according to circumstances, shows itself in the act of passing into intelligence. This marks the superiority of the crow over birds it often resembles in its actions. Most birds are wary. The crow is wary, and something more. Other shy birds, for instance ducks, avoid every strange object. The crow considers whether there be anything dangerous in the strangeness. An ordinary scarecrow will not keep our crow from anything worth a little risk. He fathoms the scarecrow, compares its behavior, under various circumstances, with that of the usual wearer of its garments, and decides to take the risk. To protect his corn, the farmer takes advantage of this very discursiveness, and stretches round the field a simple line, nothing in itself, but hinting at some undeveloped mischief which the bird cannot penetrate.
Again, the crow is sometimes looked upon as a mere marauder; but this description also is much too narrow for him. He is anxious only for his dinner, and swallows seed-corn and noxious grubs with perfect impartiality. He is not a mere pirate, living by plunder alone, but rather like the old Phoenician sea-farer, indifferently honest or robber as occasion serves,—and robber not from fierceness of disposition, but merely from utter unscrupulousness as to means.
This is shown in his docility. A hawk or an eagle is never tamed, but a crow is more easily and completely tamable than the gentlest singing-bird. The one I have just spoken of, though hardly six months from the nest, would allow himself to be handled by his owner, and would suffer even a stranger to touch him. When I first came near the house, he greeted me with a suppressed caw, and flew along some hundred yards just over my head, looking down, first with one eye and then with the other, to get a complete view of the stranger. Next morning I became aware, when but half awake, of a sort of mewing sound in the neighborhood, and at last looking around, I saw through the window, which opened to the floor, my new acquaintance perched on the porch roof, which was at the same level, turning his head from side to side, and eyeing me through the glass with divers queer contortions and gesticulations, reminding me of some odd, old, dried-up French dancing-master, and with a varied succession of croakings, now high, now low, evidently bent upon attracting my attention. When he had succeeded, he flew off with loud, joyous caws to the top of the house, where I heard him rolling nuts or acorns from the ridge, and flying to catch them before they fell off.
Their independence of seasons is shown also in their habit of associating in about equal numbers throughout the year. In the spring the flocks are more noticeable, hovering about some grove of pines, flying straight up in the air and swooping down again with an uninterrupted cawing,—seemingly a sort of crow ball, with a view to match-making. Afterwards they become more silent, and apparently more solitary, but still fly out to their feeding-grounds morning and evening; and if you sit down in the woods near one of their nests, the uneasy choking chuckle, ending at last in the outright cawing of the disturbed owner, will generally be answered from every point, and crow after crow come edging up from tree to tree to see what is the matter.
Though all of the crow tribe are notorious for their harsh voices, yet if the power of mimicry be considered as a mark of superiority, the crow has claims to high rank in this department also. The closest imitators of the human voice are birds of this family: for instance, the Mino bird. Our crow also is a vocal mimic, and that not in the matter-of-course way of the mocking-bird, but, as it were, more individual and spontaneous. He is not merely an imitator of the human voice, like the parrots, (and a better one as regards tone,) nor of other birds, like the thrushes, but combines both. The tame crow already mentioned very readily undertook extempore imitations of words, and with considerable success. I once heard a crow imitate the warbling of a small bird, in a tone so entirely at variance with his ordinary voice, that, though assured by one who had heard him before, that it was a crow and nothing else, it was only on the clearest proof that I could satisfy myself of the fact. It seemed to be quite an original and individual performance.
The blue jay is a near relative of the crow, and, like him, omnivorous, harsh-voiced, predaceous, a robber of birds' nests; so that if you hear the robins during their nesting-time making an unusual clamor about the house, the chances are you will get a glimpse of this brilliant marauder, sneaking away with a troop of them in pursuit. His usual voice is a harsh scream, but he has some low flute-like notes not without melody. The presence of a hawk, or more particularly an owl in the woods, is often made known by the screaming of the jays, who flock together about him with ever-increasing noise, like a troop of jackals about a lion, pressing in upon him closer and closer in a paroxysm of excitement, while the owl, thus taken at disadvantage, sidles along his bough seeking concealment, and at length softly flaps off to some more undisturbed retreat.
The blue jay is a shy bird, but he is enough of a crow to take a risk where anything is to be had for it, and in winter will come close to the house for food. In his choice of a nesting-place he seems at first sight to show less than his usual caution; for, though the nest is a very conspicuous one, it is generally made in a pine sapling not far from the ground, and often on a path or other opening in the woods. But perhaps, in the somewhat remote situations where he builds, the danger is less from below than from birds of prey sailing overhead. I once found a blue jay's nest on a path in the woods somewhat frequented by me, but not often trodden by any one else, and passed it twice on different days, and saw the bird sitting, but took some pains not to alarm her. The next time, and the next, she was not there; and on examination I found the nest empty, though with no marks of having been robbed. There was not time for the eggs to have hatched, and it was plain, that, finding herself observed, she had carried them off.