Crows, more than any other birds, are fond of excitement and great crowds; the slightest unusual object furnishes an occasion for an assembly.  A wounded bird will create as much stir in a flock of crows as a railroad accident does in a village.  But when some prowling old crow discovers an owl sleeping away the sunlight in the top of a great hemlock, his delight and excitement know no bounds.  There is a suppressed frenzy in his very call that every crow in the neighborhood understands. Come! come! everybody come! he seems to be screaming as he circles over the tree-top; and within two minutes there are more crows gathered about that old hemlock than one would believe existed within miles of the place.  I counted over seventy one day, immediately about a tree in which one of them had found an owl; and I think there must have been as many more flying about the outskirts that I could not count.

At such times one can approach very near with a little caution, and attend, as it were, a crow caucus.  Though I have attended a great many, I have never been able to find any real cause for the excitement.  Those nearest the owl sit about in the trees cawing vociferously; not a crow is silent.  Those on the outskirts are flying rapidly about and making, if possible, more noise than the inner ring.  The owl meanwhile sits blinking and staring, out of sight in the green top.  Every moment two or three crows leave the ring to fly up close and peep in, and then go screaming back again, hopping about on their perches, cawing at every breath, nodding their heads, striking the branches, and acting for all the world like excited stump speakers.

The din grows louder and louder; fresh voices are coming in every minute; and the owl, wondering in some vague way if he is the cause of it all, flies off to some other tree where he can be quiet and go to sleep.  Then, with a great rush and clatter, the crows follow, some swift old scout keeping close to the owl and screaming all the way to guide the whole cawing rabble.  When the owl stops they gather round again and go through the same performance more excitedly than before.  So it continues till the owl finds some hollow tree and goes in out of sight, leaving them to caw themselves tired; or else he finds some dense pine grove, and doubles about here and there, with that shadowy noiseless flight of his, till he has thrown them off the track.  Then he flies into the thickest tree he can find, generally outside the grove where the crows are looking, and sitting close up against the trunk blinks his great yellow eyes and listens to the racket that goes sweeping through the grove, peering curiously into every thick pine, searching everywhere for the lost excitement.

The crows give him up reluctantly.  They circle for a few minutes over the grove, rising and falling with that beautiful, regular motion that seems like the practice drill of all gregarious birds, and generally end by collecting in some tree at a distance and hawing about it for hours, till some new excitement calls them elsewhere.