Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1890-08-21
A FRIEND OF THE CROW.
He Is a Mighty Cute Bird, and It
Isn't Easy to Fool Him,

Farmer Lucius S. Clark of North Alb
ington township in Pennsylvania is a
great friend of crows. He declares that
the noisy big birds do great deal more
good than harm on his place, and he new
er allows his sons to rob their nests, or to
shoot or trap them. Consequently all the
crows that nest in Farmer Clark's woods
every summer, and sail over his broa0
| acres at all seasons of the year, are much
tanner than those that flock on the farms
of some of his neighbors. Even though
he is kind to his big family of crows,
Farmer Clark says that the black rascals
have until this season been in the habit
of scratching up lots of his corn as soon
it was planted, and of pulling up lots
more shortly after it had become nicely
sprouted. But the cutworms and other
crawling things that the crows devoured
more than paid for the damage they did
to the corn, and that was why he cherish
ed the glossy birds, he said.
When planting time came this
spring Farmer Clark thought he would
see if he couldn't make the crows let the
corn alone after it had been planted. He
boiled lot of tar in large kettle,
dumped his seed corn into it, and kept STIR
ring the mass until each kernel was COM
plctely covered with coating of tar, and
after that he rolled the corn in pulverized
same day, and the crows clawed a few
hills of it up and were in peck of trouble
for several hours. The cunning fellows
evidently couldn't make out what the
stuff was, for they dropped the kernels as
though they were red-hot bits of metal,
and then flew away to another part of the
field and tried other hills. The corn did
not taste right to any of the crows, and
after they had sampled hills here and
there the whole flock met at back cor
ner of the lot and had noisy discussion
over the mystery. In the course of half
an hour one of the crows sailed away,
alighted on hill, scratched into it and
suddenly started back to where its COM
panions were sitting silently on the fence,
yelling out the information on the way
that 1t was the same nasty stuff as the
rest. Then the whole flock jawed as
tight as they could for minute or so,
when another crow sailed forth to a
different section of the field, tackled o
HILL took a kernel in his BILL elected it
mighty quick, and flew over to the fence
with the same disgusting report For
two hours the crows took turns at invest
igating finally came to the conclusion
that they had been numerically fooled,
and went cawing away to the woods on
the hillside. Farmer Clark had watched
them all the time, and he declared that
the crows let that field entirely alone
from then on.
In another patch the men planted two
rows of corn that had not been coated
with tar and lime. The rows were ten
rods apart and the cunning crows un-
earthed every hill in each row and gob-
bled up every kernel of corn, but they
didn't touch a single hill of the interven-
ing rows where the tarred corn was.
Farmer Clark said that their eye teeth
had been cut in the former field, and
the birds were too sharp to be led into the
same painful experience again. Plain
corn was planted in the two rows the
second time, and the crows scratched it
all up the next day Then the men
put beans in the corn hills, and the beans
were not disturbed by the black rascals.
Another strange thing about the be-
havior of Farmer Clark's flock of crows
was noticed by the watchful farmer when
the cultivate" was run between the rows
of corn for h first time. In the latter
field dozens 20. crows followed the cult
vator, and picked up hundreds of cut
worms. When the farm hand turned his
horse about the flock rose up and flew to
the fence, but as soon as he had got well
started on his way to the other end of
the lot they settled down few rods be-