Food of the Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos Brehm, in South-central KansasPlatt, Dwight R.
Science
Food of the Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos Brehm, in South-central Kansas
Platt, Dwight R.
Crows
From early September to early October sorghum was in full head. The
crows spent most of their feeding time in plowed fields, stubble fields,
or pastures. Much time was spent along creeks where pools, which
contained many small fish, were drying. Pellets were common under a
small roost. Grasshoppers and beetles were the two staple foods in the
diet at this time, as shown by their high frequencies and high
percentages in pellets. The high percentage and frequency of wheat
corroborates the observation that most of the feeding was being done in
wheat fields. The relatively large percentages of fish bones, crayfish,
and snail shells can be correlated with the observation that much time
was spent by the crows at the pools in creek beds. Many ants were in the
pellets. The total percentage of animal materials in the pellets was
much higher in this period than in other periods. Plant material had
been the highest, percentagewise, during most of the summer, except in
the latter part of July. Most studies of food of the crow have shown a
higher content of animal material during the summer than does my study.
It would seem that much of the food material which did not show up in
pellets during the summer was animal material.
Grasshoppers predominated in the diet in early October; some pellets
consisted of little other than grasshopper mandibles and leg joints.
Wheat is sown in this area from September 10 to October 15, most of it
being sown after October 5, the recommended Hessian fly-free date. Most
of the grain sorghum is harvested by mid-October. However, the
utilization of both of these items was low in October. By October 10
only one pool was left in the creek bed under observation. The amount of
fish bones, crayfish, and snail shells in the pellets decreased during
this period.
Killing frosts occurred in mid-October. The percentage of grasshoppers
in the diet then declined rapidly and later in the autumn declined more
slowly. Nevertheless, grasshoppers and beetles remained the predominant
animal-food residues into December and frequencies of occurrence
remained relatively high.
As autumn progressed and insects became scarcer, plant material made up
an ever-larger percentage of the diet. Wheat and sorghum constituted
more than one-half of the food residues in this period. However, in
December utilization of sorghum by resident crows in eastern Harvey
County decreased. Sorghum is not an important crop in this area.
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