e completely ground up and digested by the
crow. Hence the amount of food furnished by mammals, either alive or as
carrion, may be higher than my figures indicate.

Bones of birds were found in only one pellet, obtained in early July.
However, few pellets were collected in the nesting season.

The eggshell occurring in the pellets probably was indicative of
extensive feeding on dumping grounds, and I received no reports of eggs
lost to crows on poultry farms. Such damage has been reduced to a
minimum since most poultry flocks are well-housed.

The percentage of aquatic animals (fish, crayfish and snail) in the
diet increased during the early autumn, as the creeks dried up in
eastern Harvey County, but after mid-October declined rapidly, as all
the pools were then gone.

Conclusions

The large wintering flocks of crows are important consumers of grain
sorghums in south-central Kansas. In the early autumn when the crow
population is building up, it damages the sorghum crop before harvest.
The damage varies from year to year, being much more keenly felt in dry
years when the crop is poor or in years when the crop is late. However,
most of the sorghums, which are the principal item of diet of these
wintering crows, are waste grain taken from the fields after harvest.
Some of this waste grain taken should be counted as a loss because the
farmer would normally let his livestock utilize it.

Crows use newly sown oat fields as a major source of food during the
late winter and early spring. However, damage to the crop is slight.
Corn is not an important crop in this area. The crow population is low
at the season when corn is planted, so probably little damage is done at
this time. Much of the corn eaten in winter is waste grain. Feeding on
wheat is of little economic importance, since most of that taken is
waste grain. Feeding on sunflower seeds may be counted as neutral to
slightly beneficial. Damage to watermelons, which are extensively grown
in the sandhills region, may be important at times. Crow feeding upon
other crops is only locally significant.

Although it has food preferences, the crow is euryphagous, and its diet
is governed to a large extent by the availability of various types of
food in its habitat. Therefore, in its ecologic relationships with many
other species, it is a density dependent predator. It reduces the
numbers of a certain species when the latter becomes unusually abundant
but lessens the mor