AMERICAN RAVEN 201 



Winter. — At least a few ravens remain all winter, even at the northern 

 limits of their breeding range. Donald B. Mac.Millan (1918) records 

 it as a winter resident at Etah, northern Greenland, but says that the 

 "majority migrate south about September 15th." And Langdon Gibson 

 (1922), referring to McCormick Bay, in latitude 77° 40' N. in northern 

 Greenland, says: "I am fully satisfied that these birds do not all migrate 

 in the fall because, after the sun had disappeared for the winter, we 

 heard their hoarse croaking and live days before the sun reappeared, 

 February 7, 1892, I saw in the dim twilight on the beach near our 

 house a Raven lazily flopping along." 



Other explorers have recorded ravens in winter on Baffin Island, 

 Southampton Island, in Ungava and northern Labrador, and along the 

 Arctic coast of Canada, where the few that remain must eke out a 

 meagre living, with deep snows covering the ground and hiding all the 

 familiar feeding places; then, driven desperate with the pangs of hun- 

 ger, they risk their lives in attempts to steal the baits from fox traps, 

 which often results fatally, as they are either killed outright or left 

 to freeze under a pall of drifted snow. 



CORVUS CORAX SINUATUS Wagler 

 AMERICAN RAVEN 



Plates 35, 36 

 HABITS 



The ravens of the Western United States have long been called by 

 the above scientific name and the rather inappropriate common name 

 for a bird that is so decidedly western. George Willett (1941) has 

 recently shown that v/e might well recognize two western races within 

 the United States. The measurements that he has accumulated "appear 

 to indicate a large race (principalis), with heavy bill and tarsus, in 

 Alaska and British Columbia; another large race (sinuatus), with slender 

 bill and tarsus, in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin region; and 

 a small race (clarionensis) ranging from interior valleys of California 

 to Clarion Island, Mexico." 



The subject of this sketch might well have been called the western 

 raven, as it occupies the western half of the United States and much of 

 Central America. It is smaller than the northern raven, with a rela- 

 tively smaller and narrower bill and a longer and slenderer tarsus. It 

 is a wide-ranging species, with a scattered distribution, and seems to 

 have no especially favored haunts. It is at home alike in the mountains 

 and on the plains or deserts, in the forests or on the open ranges; it 



