220 



OMNIVOROUS BIRDS. 



near 70 men, attended by constant hunters, never met 

 with a single Pie, nor were any appearances of their nests 

 any where visible. 1100 miles up the Arkansa, and 

 more than 1000 up Red River, countries which I 

 visited in summer never presented a specimen of this 

 otherwise familiar and roving bird. The season of incu- 

 bation with the American Pies, so different from their 

 familiar habits in the old continent, is passed, no doubt, 

 in the wooded recesses of the Rocky Mountains, which 

 abound with berries and acorns, and with small birds and 

 their eggs. They are known to make so great a destruc- 

 tion among the eggs of Grous, Pheasants, Partridges, and 

 even among young chickens, in many parts of Europe, as 

 to be proscribed by law, and destroyed for the premium 

 justly set on their heads. The absence of food and shelter 

 for their nests in summer, suitable for the Magpie, on the 

 vast prairies of the Arkansas and Missouri, particularly 

 toward the sandy deserts at the base of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, will probably continue as a perpetual barrier to the 

 eastern migrationsof this mischievous species, whose means 

 of flight and travelling are still more circumscibed than 

 those of the common Crow. They consequently experience 

 annually, in the terrible vicissitudes of climate incident 

 to the countries they inhabit, like the Esquimaux of the 

 arctic regions, either a feast or a famine, and are rendered 

 so bold and voracious by want, that in the vicinity of 

 the northern Andes, towards New Mexico, Colonel Pike 

 was visited by them in the month of December, in lati- 

 tude 41°, while the thermometer was at the dreadful line 

 of 17° below zero, on the scale of Reaumur. They now 

 assembled round the miserable party in great numbers for 

 the purpose of picking the sore backs of their perishing 

 horses, and, like the Vulture of Prometheus, they did not 

 await the death of the subjects they tormented, but fed 



