The Blue Jay is a true American; he is known throughout this continent, and never visits any other country.  At no season is he absent from our woods, and he is an industrious consumer of the larger insects and grubs, atoning in this way for some of his evil deeds.  In this respect, however, his services are not to be compared to those of the Robin and the Blue-Bird.  Yet I am not prepared to say that I would consent to his banishment, for he is one of the most cheering tenants of the groves, at a season when they have but few inhabitants; and I never listen to his voice without recalling a crowd of charming reminiscences of pleasant winter excursions and adventures at an early period of my life.  The very harshness of his voice has caused it to be impressed more forcibly upon the memory, in connection with these scenes.

The common Crow may be considered the representative, in America, of the European Rook, which he resembles in many of his habits, performing similar services, and being guilty of the same mischievous deeds.  It is remarkable that in Europe, where land is more valuable than in this country, and where agriculture is carried on with an amount of skill and nicety that would astonish an American farmer, the people are not so jealous of the birds.  In Great Britain rookeries are regular establishments, and the Rooks, notwithstanding the mischief they do, are protected, on account of their services to agriculture.  The farmers of Europe, having learned by repeated observation, that, without the aid of mischievous birds, the work of the farmer would be sacrificed to the more destructive insect-race, forgive them their trespasses, as we forgive the trespasses of cats and dogs.  The respect shown to birds by any people seems to bear a certain ratio to the antiquity of the nation.  Hence the sacredness with which they are regarded in Japan, where the population is so dense that the inhabitants would feel that they could ill afford to divide the produce of their fields with the birds, unless they were convinced of their usefulness.

The Crow is one of the most unfortunate of the feathered tribe in his relations to man; for by almost all nations he is regarded with hatred, and every man’s hand is against him.  He is protected neither by custom nor superstition; the sentimentalist cares nothing for him as an object of poetical regard, and the utilitarian is blind to his services as a scavenger.  The farmer considers him as the very ringleader of mischief, and uses all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; and even the moralist is disposed to condemn him for his cunning and dissimulation.