DOES DRUGGING CROWS FOR CAPTURE CAUSE ABNORMALLY HIGH MORTALITY

A recent paper described a method of using drugged eggs to capture Ame rican Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), and reported that two or three of 15 crows died within 2 d of capture (Stouffer and Caccamise 1991a). S urvival data from two on-going studies of American Crows in California and New York indicate that the loss of 13-20% of a sample within such a short period of time is abnormally high, and point to the possibili ty that the technique may be too risky to be used in some situations.