Jim was a big crow. He was as black as black could be. Even his bill was black. All crows are like that. That is why people say, “As black as a crow,” when they mean very black.
Jet was another crow. She was as black as Jim, though her feathers did not shine in the sun as his did. But she suited Jim exactly. He wanted her to be his mate, and he tried his best to tell her so.
I think that Jet must have known what he meant, for by and by she flew off with him. Then they started out together to find a good place to build their nest.
First of all Jet and Jim flew to an oak tree deep in the woods. A pair of hawks had built a nest there the summer before. If they could have the hawks’ old nest to build in, they could make their home easily and quickly.
But Jet and Jim were too late. Two hawks had already found the old nest and had set up housekeeping in it. When they saw the crows coming, both hawks flew out and drove them away.
It did not seem wise for Jet and Jim to choose another tree near there. Hawks do not like crows, and it might not be a safe place for them or their babies. So Jet and Jim had to fly off and look for a home somewhere else.
At last the two crows found a tree they thought would do very well. Two branches formed a crotch that would hold their nest safe. The tree was near a farm, where they could get plenty of grain and insects to eat.
So Jet and Jim set to work to build their nest. Since they did not have an old nest to build on, they had to build the whole nest for themselves. First they began to bring some sticks and lay them in the crotch of the tree.
While they were working, the farmer happened to pass by the tree they had chosen. He soon saw what they were doing. Now this did not please him at all. He did not like crows. They pulled up his corn after he had planted it. They sometimes killed his little chickens. Once or twice he had seen them robbing the nests of other birds of eggs or baby birds.
So the farmer went for his gun, and he shot at the two crows. He did not hit either of them, but of course they flew away. Then he called his son to climb the tree and throw away the sticks that Jet and Jim had put together in the crotch of the tree.
Jet and Jim saw at once that that tree would not be a safe place for their nest. The farmer would break up any nest they started near his place. So they flew back to the woods.
This time Jet found a thick bushy tree. It was a long way from the hawks’ tree, and the bushes around it were so thick that nobody would be likely to be walking near there.
Now the nest began to grow very fast. Jet and Jim both worked on it. After they had made the bottom with sticks, they piled pieces of grapevine and cedar bark on the sticks. Then they built up the walls of the nest with more sticks, corn husks, grass, and weed stalks.
Outside the new nest was a big, rough-looking pile of sticks. Inside it was a cozy place for eggs or for baby birds. Of course, the hollow inside was broad and deep. It had to be to hold such large birds as the baby crows would become. It was lined with horse-hair, grass, and a little moss, so as to make it warm for the eggs and a good bed for the little ones.
By and by there were five big eggs in the nest. They were pale green, so pale they were nearly white, and they had brown spots on them.
Jet and Jim took turns sitting on the eggs, to keep them warm every minute. Jet would have been very tired, if she had had to sit on the eggs all of the time. Besides Jim would have had to bring her meals to her. It was nearly three weeks before the little crows pecked their way out of their shells.
Jet was their mother, so perhaps she thought the babies were pretty, but nobody else would have thought so. They were not covered with soft down as little chickens are when they are hatched. They did not have any feathers at all, and their eyes were big but they were not open yet.
they are able to fly. So they do not need to have their feathers and the use of their eyes as soon as they are out of their shells.
The little crows began to grow rapidly. Their feathers began to grow, too, the very day they came out of the eggs. You never saw such hungry babies. From morning to night their big mouths were stretched wide.
The crow babies were not like human babies, who can drink only milk. Jet and Jim brought many kinds of food to fill the hungry mouths of their little ones. The crow babies ate beetles and grasshoppers. They ate spiders and small toads. They ate mice and crayfish. Now and then they had a young bird or a baby chicken for dinner. And, of course, they ate newly planted corn. All crows do that.
You would not guess how much food it took to feed those hungry, growing babies. All day long Jim and Jet were busy hunting food and carrying it to the brood in the nest. Baby crows eat many times their weight in grasshoppers and bugs before they are strong enough to fly from the nest.
Some men have said that when grasshoppers are plentiful a pair of crows and their brood may eat two thousand every day. That seems a great deal for two birds to catch and carry home. Suppose the family ate one thousand a day for three weeks, that would be more than twenty thousand grasshoppers.
Grasshoppers eat and destroy grass and grain. Sometimes a big flock of grasshoppers destroys whole fields of growing grain. Maybe the crows help the farmer more than they harm him.
Besides grasshoppers and all the other things, Jet and Jim fed their babies May beetles too. May beetles are the big brown beetles with hard wings, that come buzzing about a light at night in the summertime. They fly into the light, bump against the electric globe, and fall, burned and stunned.
The crow family ate hundreds and thousands of these brown beetles. Big as the beetles are, each of the little crows sometimes ate more than twenty of them for one meal.
The farmer did not know that crows eat grasshoppers and May beetles or he would not have driven Jet and Jim from the cornfield. He only knew that they pull up the newly planted corn.
Sometimes Jet and Jim robbed the nests of the thrushes and the robins. They did not get many little birds or eggs, though, because the old birds drove them away.
One day Jet and Jim played a trick on a family of robins. Jim flew toward the robins’ nest, while Jet hid among the trees near by. When the song birds saw Jim coming, they flew at him. They made loud, harsh noises. They seemed to be saying, “Thief! Thief! Go away! Go away!”
Jim flew away as though he were very much frightened. He went a long way off, and the song birds flew after him. That was part of the trick.
When Jim had led the robins far away from their nest, Jet flew to it. There was nobody to keep her away. She broke one of the eggs and ate it. She carried another away with her.
Jet carried the egg in her bill. She first poked a little hole in one end of the egg. Into this she stuck the lower part of her bill. Then she shut her bill gently and held the egg lightly, so as not to crush it.
After that Jet and Jim often played such tricks on the song birds. Sometimes they even carried away the baby birds of their little neighbors.
In June Jet and Jim began to clean and mend their nest. Their babies were big enough to look out for themselves now. The old crows were going to raise another brood.
There was plenty for all the crows to eat. Old and young crows caught grasshoppers and field mice in the meadows. They dug cutworms and white grubs out of the ploughed ground. They found caterpillars under the trees and bushes.
So long as the toads, which had hatched out in the pond near by, were little, the crows ate a great many of them. They sometimes picked up toads an inch long and swallowed them whole.
When the toads grew bigger, the crows still picked them up from the ground, but they often dropped them again. Sometimes the crows killed the larger toads and hid them under stones or in heaps of grass.
Perhaps the liquid that toads send out of their skin becomes more bitter as the toads grow older. Crows do not like the taste so well, so they do not swallow the large toads. When the toads are grown, the crows do not even try to catch them.
As the summer went by, the crows found plenty of food for dessert. First there were wild cherries and blueberries. Then came elderberries and wild grapes. The crows liked all of these. They were busy all day hunting food in the woods and fields.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/Crows in Summer. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.