<p>The common crow, which has more enemies than friends, is difficult to outsmart and lives in every state.</p>

I will deviate from writing about songbirds in this column to tell about a bird that is neither pretty nor can it sing. It is the common crow, which has far more enemies than friends.

Farmers in particular have been making war on crows for generations. In spite of this, there are more crows in North America now than there were when the Pilgrims landed.

That is partly because crows are difficult to outsmart, but also there were almost no crows in the vast prairie lands in the Midwest until farmers planted trees and grew crops. Now crows are in every state and Canada.

Crows belong to the family of jays and magpies, and have many of the same habits. In winter crows travel in enormous flocks and have communal roosting trees, especially in the southern states. Like house sparrows and starlings, crows have taken advantage of living in no-shooting zones. They have learned to pick up scraps from the city parks, and eat backyard cherries and dog and cat food on the porch.

They build their nests mostly in evergreen trees where they use sticks except in the center where they lay four or five eggs on a softer bottom. The eggs hatch in about 18 days and chicks eat enormous quantities of food. There is almost nothing that crows wont eat, including carrion.

There are quite a few crows in downtown Enterprise where they are not welcome by the people who are trying to feed the songbirds.

Just like the blue jays, when crows discover a great horned owl trying to take a daytime nap they pester it unmercifully all day long. However, these big owls get a certain amount of revenge when they find crows sitting on their roost in the dark of the night.

Some people mistake ravens for crows, but ravens are much larger and try to avoid humans.

I have noticed huge flocks of crows flying towards the forested areas just before dark. No doubt they are going to their roosting grounds and they fly back in early morning to the fields where they can find larger insects, such as beetles, locusts and centipedes.

So in spite of their reputation, crows are probably more beneficial than harmful. But that didnt keep me from shooting them almost all of my life.