NORTHWESTERN CROW 271 



bounded by the beach. The abrupt side of the bluff was thickly covered 

 by a second growth of evergreen and deciduous trees, some of good size, 

 and in several of the former a number of pairs of northwestern crows 

 nested each spring." 



Sidney B. Peyton writes to me that these crows are numerous on 

 Forrester Island, where the majority of the nests were not over 8 feet 

 from the ground in the thick spruce trees. One was "in a hole in a 

 cliff about 15 feet up," and three others were under boulders on the 

 beach "about 100 feet above the high tide mark." 



Richard M. Bond has sent me some notes on this crow; he says that 

 on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, "where the timber had only been 

 gone over lightly for the best trees, the forest was almost in its virgin 

 state. Here I was able to locate only two occupied nests, both about 

 two-thirds of the way up fairly large Douglas firs — about 70 feet from 

 the ground. In the San Juan Islands, even in virgin stands, the trees 

 are in most places very small, and nests are easy to locate from the 

 ground. Douglas fir is here the commonest tree, and though hemlock, 

 western red cedar, alder, and others are also present in some numbers, 

 I have never found a crow nest in any tree but the fir. The crows nest 

 on the main islands rather like the western crow does; that is, in scat- 

 tered groups, but they also nest on some of the small islets of an acre 

 or less, where there are only two or three scraggly firs. I do not re- 

 member finding more than one nest on such an islet." 



Eggs. — This crow lays ordinarily four or five eggs. They are indis- 

 tinguishable, except in size, from the eggs of other crows and probably 

 a large series would show most of the variations common to the species. 



The measurements of 40 eggs average 40.4 by 28.2 millimeters; the 

 eggs showing the four extremes measure 44.2 by 28.8, 40.8 by 29.8, 

 36.7 by 27.9, and 40.9 by 25.9 millimeters. 



Young. — In the locality mentioned above, S. F. Rathbun had a good 

 chance to watch the behavior of the young crows, which, early in July, 

 were still being fed to some extent by their parents ; "now and then one 

 of them would sidle up to an adult and stroke the old bird's beak, evi- 

 dently coaxing to be fed." He says in his notes: "It is interesting to 

 watch the old and young birds ; there are upwards of 50 of them. The 

 other day, during a strong wind, many of the crows played about in it; 

 some of their aerial evolutions were most graceful and reminded one 

 of the raven's flight ability. Those I watched seemed to battle the 

 wind for the pure love of the sport, old and young birds alike indulg- 

 ing in it. 



"All the crows were drifting around in the wind just before sunset. 

 There are now almost 70 of the birds. The young among them are still 



