In September the crows began to fly away from the fields and meadows where they had been all summer. They were going to their winter roosts. By two’s and three’s they left their summer homes and flapped away.
Jet and Jim started one fine September morning. They flew a long way. At last they came to a pine woods. Already hundreds of crows were there. Hundreds more were coming every day.
Soon there were thousands of crows in that big pine woods. They would live there all winter. Every morning the crows left the roost to find food. They flew off in little groups. Sometimes Jet and Jim went by themselves, and sometimes two or three other crows went with them.
The corn had been cut and shocked now, and the crows could tear open the husks and get the corn if they wanted it. But it was so hard they did not like it. They would not eat it if they could get something else.
Every night the crows came back to the woods to sleep. Flap, flap, flap!
Long lines of them flew across the sky at sunset, coming back to the shelter of the roost.
As the weather grew colder, the birds often had to go a long way to find anything to eat. The white grubs had gone down into the ground, and there were no grasshoppers or beetles or caterpillars to be found.
But when the farmers started to haul in the corn shocks, the crows caught plenty of field mice that had made their nests under the shocks. The crows flew to the field, and perched in trees or on fences where they could watch. As soon as a wagon load of corn was driven away, down flew the crows to the field, and hunted for the mice that were now hiding under stones or clods or weed stems.
The winter roost was near a large lake, and the crows often went to the shore for fish, crayfish, and other food. When even the fish and crayfish began to feel the cold and stay near the bottom of the lake, the crows lived on ivy berries, beechnuts, and chestnuts.
When a flock of crows was feeding together, there was always one crow on the watch for danger. If he saw a man with a gun, he gave a sharp “Caw, caw” to let the others know.
If the danger was very near, the crow that was watching flew away without a sound. The rest of the flock then flew after him as quickly as they could. No matter how quietly he went, the whole flock knew it at once.
When the ground thawed out in the spring, good times came again. The insects came out once more. Now and then the crows found some corn that had been lying on the ground all winter, under the snow. It was well soaked with water now, and not hard and dry as it had been.
The big flock that had lived all winter in the roost in the pine woods began to break up. Again it was time for making nests, and off they flew in pairs.
Jet and Jim started off, back to the woods where they had built last year. But they were careful to keep out of the way of the farmer who had driven them from his tree. They did not want him to shoot at them again.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/Crows in Winter. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.