There is only one time when a crow is a fool, and that is at night.
There is only one bird that terrifies the crow, and that is the owl.
When, therefore, these come together it is a woeful thing for the sable
birds. The distant hoot of an owl after dark is enough to make them
withdraw their heads from under their wings, and sit trembling and
miserable till morning. In very cold weather the exposure of their faces
thus has often resulted in a crow having one or both of his eyes frozen,
so that blindness followed and therefore death. There are no hospitals
for sick crows.
But with the morning their courage comes again, and arousing themselves
they ransack the woods for a mile around till they find that owl, and if
they do not kill him they at least worry him half to death and drive him
twenty miles away.
In 1893 the crows had come as usual to Castle Frank. I was walking in
these woods a few days afterward when I chanced upon the track of a
rabbit that had been running at full speed over the snow and dodging
about among the trees as though pursued. Strange to tell, I could see no
track of the pursuer. I followed the trail and presently saw a drop of
blood on the snow, and a little farther on found the partly devoured
remains of a little brown bunny. What had killed him was a mystery until
a careful search showed in the snow a great double-toed track and a
beautifully pencilled brown feather. Then all was clear--a horned owl.
Half an hour later, in passing again by the place, there, in a tree,
within ten feet of the bones of his victim, was the fierce-eyed owl
himself. The murderer still hung about the scene of his crime. For once
circumstantial evidence had not lied. At my approach he gave a guttural
'grrr-oo' and flew off with low flagging flight to haunt the distant
sombre woods.
Two days afterward, at dawn, there was a great uproar among the crows.
I went out early to see, and found some black feathers drifting over the
snow. I followed up the wind in the direction from which they came and
soon saw the bloody remains of a crow and the great double-toed track
which again told me that the murderer was the owl. All around were signs
of the struggle, but the fell destroyer was too strong. The poor crow
had been dragged from his perch at night, when the darkness bad put him
at a hopeless disadvantage.
I turned over the remains, and by chance unburied the head--then started
with an exclamation of sorrow. Alas! It was the head of old Silverspot.
His long life of usefulness to his tribe was over--slain at last by the
owl that he had taught so many hundreds of young crows to beware of.
The old nest on the Sugar Loaf is abandoned now. The crows still come
in spring-time to Castle Frank, but without their famous leader their
numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be seen no more about the old
pine-grove in which they and their forefathers had lived and learned for
ages.