202 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



may be seen flying from its nest on some high cUff in a deep rocky 

 canyon, or perched on some tall pine high up in the mountains. 



M. P. Skinner tells me that in Yellowstone National Park ravens are 

 seen almost anywhere and at all seasons, perched on the ground or on 

 some prominent roc)c, or about the geyser basins, and they are common 

 in the lodgepole and fir forests from the lowest altitudes to the highest 

 peaks. "In spring ravens are on the edge of the lake ice about to 

 break up; they are rather frequent about the buffalo herds and often 

 visit garbage dumps and old camp sites ; they even visit occupied camps." 



Mrs. Nice (1931) states that the raven was formerly an abundant 

 resident in Oklahoma in the days of the buffalo, but that witli the 

 disappearance of the bison the ravens have gone. Many ravens were 

 killed by eating poisoned baits and the viscera of wolves that had been 

 poisoned. "Here seems to lie the explanation of the practically com- 

 plete disappearance of this once abundant bird from Kansas and Okla- 

 homa — the extermination of the buffalo on whose carcasses it fed. and 

 the unintentional, yet wholesale, poisoning by cattlemen." 



According to Dickey and van Rossem (1938) this raven is a "fairly 

 common resident of the interior mountains and foothills" of El Salvador 

 "from Los Esesmiles eastward. * * * The raven occurs principally in 

 the pine regions of the Arid Upper Tropical Zone, but in late fall and 

 winter descends to the foothills. Extremes of altitude are 800 to 8.500 

 feet. * * * In the pines on Los Esesmiles ravens were decidedly more 

 numerous than anywhere else in El Salvador and were seen almost 

 daily. There were at least a dozen pairs within a radius of five miles 

 from camp at 6,400 feet, and these were scattered at elevations of from 

 6,000 to 8,500 feet. Below 6,000 feet ravens were less numerous, but 

 nevertheless were distributed generally all over the pine country down 

 to about 3,000 feet." 



Bendire (1895) says of the haunts of ravens: "It seems to make little 

 difference to these birds how desolate the country whic.h they inhabit 

 may be, as long as it furnishes sufficient food to sustain life, and they 

 are not hard to please in such matters. One is liable to meet with them 

 singly or in pairs, and occasionally in considerable numl^ers, along the 

 cliffs of the seashore, and on the adjacent islands of the Pacific coast, 

 from Washington south to Lower California, as well as in the moun- 

 tains and arid plains of the interior, even in the hottest and most 

 barren wastes of the Colorado Desert, as the Death Valley region, and 

 through all the States and Territories west of the Rocky Mountains. 

 * * * I have met with them at every Post at which I have been sta- 

 tioned in the West." 



Courtship. — With the springtime urge of love-making, the otherwise 



