186 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



pastures in tlie center, and is heavily wooded at both ends with firs 

 and spruces and a few white birches. There was a rather large colony 

 of the herons here, and in the midst of the colony was a raven's nest. 

 A pair of ravens were flying about overhead, croaking and cawing 

 angrily, and on the ground nearby were three of the herons' eggs, with 

 big holes in the ends and the contents still fresh, as if recently taken 

 from a nest ; evidently we had disturbed the ravens at their stolen feast. 



During the next two years I came earlier and found several old and 

 new nests on Dumpling and Fog Islands in Penobscot Bay, and on 

 some of the islands in Jerico Bay. The nests were all in spruce trees in 

 thick woods, at heights varying from 25 to 32 feet above ground. Most 

 of them were conspicuous from the ground below, but one was well 

 hidden in a thick top. They w^ere mostly huge structures, 2 to 3 feet in 

 diameter and nearly as much in height; evidently they are sometimes 

 added to from year to year, as we know that the Dumpling Island nest 

 was used for three years in succession. They were made of crooked 

 sticks as large as a man's thumb, mixed with smaller sticks and twigs. 

 The nests were deeply hollowed and were warmly lined with sheep's 

 v/ool and sometimes a little usnea; in one nest there was a patchwork 

 lining of black-and-white wool. These ravens evidently lay at irregular 

 intervals, for on April 23, 1900, I examined a nest containing two fresh 

 eggs and another with two lusty young. 



But Maine ravens do not all nest on the coastal islands. Paul F. 

 Eckstorm writes to me : "On March 28, 1940, I took a set of five eggs 

 from a nest situated in a crevice of a cliff 27 feet above the highest shelf 

 accessible on foot. The nest was about 4 feet in diameter from front to 

 rear, with the cavity at the rear 6 inches from the back wall. The nest 

 was made roughly of course sticks, largely hemlock, and lined entirely 

 with deer hair taken from some old carcass. The top of the cliflF bulges 

 into a great overhang extending like a roof about 6 feet above and, in 

 places, 10 feet beyond the nest site. The nest was located near a large 

 pond and about 15 miles back from the general coastal trend. The 

 cliff has a southern exposure and warms up in advance of the adjacent 

 flatter country." 



Mr. Harlow (1922) has given us a most comprehensive account of 

 the nestinof of the raven in Penns3^1vania, from which I quote the fol- 

 lowing extracts : 



There are two distinct types of nesting site chosen here in Pennsylvania — the 

 cliff site and the tree site (the cliff nests outnumbering the tree nests in the pro- 

 portion of about eight to one). * ♦ * 



One feature is almost invariably demanded by the cliff nesting Ravens and that 

 is that the location be dark and well shaded. Usually the darkest available section 

 of the cliff is selected where the ledges are shaded by hemlocks which often grow 



