CHAPTER IX 



CROW RELATIVES 



(Crows, Jays, Blackhirds, Orioles, Larks) 



STARTING off bright and early that elegant 

 morning, the fifteenth of May, Ned and I drove 

 twenty miles over the roughest sort of roads 

 through a wild hill country and explored many a fine 

 timber tract. It was just the day for active exercise, 

 bright, but wdth a cool easterly breeze. Hosts of 

 interesting bird migrants were streaming through on 

 their way north and kept us busy identifying them. 

 We found five occupied hawks' nests with eggs, and 

 it was a great day for crows' nests, too. 



In the second piece of woods which we tackled, we 

 w^ere searching for a hawks' nest, which w^e found a 

 little later, when I discovered a large platform of new 

 sticks about thirty-five feet up a hemlock tree, wath a 

 bird's tail sticking out over the edge. At first w^e both 

 thought it was the hawk, but the glass showed the 

 plumage to be *' black as a crow," and crow it was. 

 It was no come-down either, for I especially wanted a 

 really good photograph of a nest wdth a brood of young 

 crows. The old bird w^as sitting like a rock and 



139 



