Henry David Thoreau’s Journal Drawings

Crow's Droppings (January 22, 1856)

Thoreau, Henry David

January 22, 1856

Still image

Image

Scale not given ; 42.443327, -71.344644

"I brought home and examined some of the droppings of the crow mentioned four pages back. They were brown and dry, though partly frozen. After long study with a microscope, I discovered that they consisted of the seeds and skins and other indigestible parts of red cedar berries and some barberries (I detected the imbricated scale-like leaves of a berry stem and then the seeds and the now black skins of the cedar berries, but easily the large seeds of the barberries) and perhaps something more, and I knew whence it had probably come, i.e. from the cedar woods and barberry bushes by Flint's Pond. These, then, make part of the food of crows in severe weather when the snow is deep, as at present."

PE 10, pg. 132-133 / 4 January-23 April 1856 / NNPM MA 1302:26 / T vol. # XX / PDF # XIV / JVIII

fauna
birds