The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 17, March, 1859 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

by Various

In the catalogue of the services of this bird we find many details which should lead us to pause before we consent to his destruction. He consumes, in the course of the year, vast quantities of grubs, worms, and noxious vermin; he is a valuable scavenger, and clears the land of offensive masses of decaying animal substances; he hunts the grass-fields, and pulls out and devours the underground caterpillars, wherever he perceives the signs of their operations, as evinced by the wilted stalks; he destroys mice, young rats, lizards, and the smaller serpents; lastly, he is a volunteer sentinel about the farm, and drives the Hawk from its inclosures, thus preventing greater mischief than that of which he himself is guilty. It is chiefly during seed-time and harvest that the depredations of the Crow are committed; during the remainder of the year we witness only his services; and so highly are these services appreciated by those who have written of birds, that I cannot name an ornithologist who does not plead in his behalf.

Let us turn our attention, for a moment, to his moral qualities. In vain is he accused of cunning, when without this quality he could not live. His wariness is really a virtue, and, under the circumstances in which he is placed, it is his principal means of self-preservation. He has no moral principles, no creed, to which he is under obligations to offer himself as a martyr. His cunning is his armor; and I am persuaded that the persecutions to which he has always been subjected have caused the development of an amount of intelligence that elevates him many degrees above the majority of the feathered race.

There are few birds that equal the Crow in sagacity. He observes many things that would seem to require the faculties of a rational being. He judges with accuracy, from the deportment of the person approaching him, if he is prepared to do him an injury; and seems to pay no regard to one who is strolling the fields in search of flowers or for recreation. On such occasions, one may get so near him as to observe his manners, and even to note the varying shades of his plumage. But in vain does the sportsman endeavor to approach him. So sure is he to fly at the right moment for his safety, that one might suppose he could measure the distance of gunshot.

The voice of the Crow is like no other sound uttered by the feathered race; it is harsh and unmelodious, and though he is capable, when domesticated, of imitating human speech, he cannot sing. But Aesop mistook the character of this bird when he represented him as the dupe of the fox, who gained the bit of cheese he carried in his mouth by inducing him to exhibit his musical powers. The Crow could not be fooled by any such appeals to his vanity.

The Crow is commonly regarded as a homely bird; yet he is not without beauty. His coat of glossy black with violet reflections, his dark eyes and sagacious expression of countenance, his stately and graceful gait, and his steady and equable flight, combine to give him a proud and dignified appearance. The Crow and the Raven have always been celebrated for their gravity, a character that seems to be the result of their black sacerdotal vesture, and of certain manifestations of intelligence in their ways and general deportment. Indeed, any one who should watch the motions of the Crow for the space of five minutes, either when he is stalking alone in the field, or when he is careering with his fellows around some tall tree in the forest, would acknowledge that he deserves to be called a grave bird.

Setting aside the services rendered by the Crow to agriculture, I esteem him for certain qualities which are agreeably associated with the charms of Nature. It is not the singing-birds alone that contribute by their voices to gladden the husbandman and cheer the solitary traveller. The crowing of the Cock at the break of day is as joyful a sound, though not so musical, as the voice of the Robin who chants his lays at the same early hour. To me the cawing of the Crow is cheering and delightful, and it is heard long before the majority of birds have left their perch. If not one of the melodies of morn, it is one of the most notable sounds that herald its approach. And how intimately is the voice of this bird associated with the sunshine of calm winter-days,—with our woodland excursions during this inclement season,—with the stroke of the woodman's axe,—with open doors in bright and pleasant weather, when the eaves are dripping with the melting snow,—and with all those cheerful sounds that enliven the groves during that period when every object is valuable that relieves the silence or softens the dreary aspect of Nature!

If we leave the open fields and woods, and ramble near the coast to some retired and solitary branch of the sea, our meditations may be suddenly startled by the harsh voice of the Kingfisher, like the sound of a watchman's rattle. This bird is seldom seen in winter in the interior; most of his species migrate southwardly and to the sea-coast, just so far as to be within reach of the open waters. As they subsist on the smaller kinds of fishes, they would perish with hunger, after the waters are frozen, if they did not migrate. But the Kingfisher often remains on the coast during open winters, and may therefore be considered one of our winter-birds.

This bird is the celebrated Alcedo, or Halcyon, of the ancients, who attributed to him many apparently supernatural powers. He was supposed to construct his nest upon the waves, on which it was made to float like a skiff. But as the turbulence of a storm would be likely to cause its destruction, Nature had gifted him with the extraordinary power of stilling the motions of the winds and waves, during the period of incubation. Hence the serene weather that accompanies the summer solstice was supposed to be occasioned by the benign influence of this bird, and the term "halcyon days" was applied to this period. It is remarkable that the fable should add to these supernatural gifts the power of song, as one of the accomplishments of the Kingfisher. These superstitions must have been very general among the ancients, and were not confined to the Greeks and Romans. Some of the Asiatic nations still wear the skin of the Kingfisher about their persons, as a protection against both moral and physical evils; the feathers are used as love-charms; and it is believed, that, if the body of the Kingfisher be evenly fixed upon a pivot, it will turn its head to the north, like the magnetic needle.

This bird is singularly grotesque in his appearance, though not without beauty of plumage. With his long, straight, and quadrangular bill, his short and diminutive feet and legs, and his immense head, his plumage of a handsome dusky blue, with a bluish band on the breast and a white collar around the neck,—when this mixture of the grotesque and the beautiful is considered in connection with the singularity of his habits, we need not marvel at the superstitions connected with his history. He sits patiently, like an angler, on a post at the head of a wharf, or on a branch of a tree that extends over the bank, and, leaning obliquely, with extended head and beak, he watches for his finny prey. There, with the light blue sky above him and the dark blue waves beneath, nothing on the surface of the water can escape his penetrating eyes. Quickly, with a sudden swoop, he seizes a single fish from an unsuspecting shoal, and announces his success by the peculiar sound of his rattle.

It may not have been observed by all that the most interesting periods or situations for rambling are not those which most abound with exciting scenes and objects. There must be a certain dearth of individual objects that draw the attention, intermingled with occasional remarkable or mysterious sights and sounds, to yield an excursion its greatest interest. The hunter (unless he be a purveyor for the market) understands this philosophy, and knows that there is more pleasure in chasing a single deer or a solitary fox over miles of pasture and moorland, than in hunting where these animals are abundant, and slaughtering them as fast as one can load his gun. The pleasures attending a rural excursion in the winter are founded on this fact, and may be explained by this principle. There, amid the general silence, every sound attracts attention and is accompanied by its echo; and since the trees and shrubs have lost their leafy garniture, every tree and other object has its own distinct shadow, and we fix our attention more easily upon anything that excites our interest than when it is distracted by the confusion of numbers.