Читать книгу Jack Miner and the Birds, and Some Things I Know about Nature онлайн

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I am going to tell you some pitiful things. I have seen young, unhatched robins spued out of a dying crow’s mouth, and the little things were still alive. Whether the eggs were broken in her throat before I shot her or not, I do not know, but they were broken when thrown up. Yes, they will take blackbirds’ eggs just as quick as they will the robins’, and other, weaker birds’ if they have the opportunity; but the robin does seem to be their choice, possibly because he does not conceal his nest better. Yet I was hunting the crows because they pulled our corn! In all my life I never knew a crow to bring corn to her young. Yes, I have shaken as high as seven little, unhatched birds out of a gasping crow’s mouth, and any one of these creatures, if left to mature, would do as much good as a crow. If you want to trap a crow use hens’ eggs for bait, but bear in mind he is cute, and you must conceal the trap very carefully.

The bronze grackle is nothing only a small crow; his habits are exactly the same. He will drop on a tree and look around; seizing an opportunity he will come down and go through a bush where there is likely to be a song-sparrow’s nest just like a ferret will go through a stone-pile after a rabbit. I have known him to take the young birds after they were hatched. But so many men who know the habits of these birds will say they think they do as much good as they do harm! Why they make this statement I don’t understand. And if you throw this book across the room and never pick it up, I cannot help it, for I am telling you the truth: These crows and grackles are the worst nest-robbers in America. They do ten times more harm than good. Remember I am not writing just to please the reader, but to give you facts gathered from personal experience and observation, and my beliefs founded thereon; and I am sure that fifty per cent. of the eggs and young of our song, insectivorous and game birds in Ontario are devoured by these cold-blooded, nest-robbing cannibals, the crow being the worst of all. He will take young mourning doves out of the nest when they are as large as sparrows; the quail, and kildeer, and dozens of other such beautiful mothers are perfectly helpless and can no more keep him off than a human mother’s naked hands could keep a vicious lion from tearing her baby into fragments.