NOPvTHERN RAVEN 191 



or tor caribou, freshly dragged down by the Arctic Wolves. And there 

 are always, of course, the fox-traps, where they c,an steal bait, pull the 

 foxes to pieces, or tear up the Snowy Owls, which have been caught." 



Lucien M. Turner says in his unpublished notes on Ungava: "In the 

 fall of the year they eat great quantities of berries and, after having 

 satiated their hunger, repair to the rocks on a point of land and digest 

 them. Their stains are everywhere visible on the rocks." In October 

 he found scores of ravens along the Koksoak River, "where they had 

 collected to feed upon the refuse of the hundreds of carcasses of rein- 

 deer, which had been speared by the Indians and Eskimos, and decom- 

 posing along the banks, whither the winds and c.urrents had drifted them." 



In the summer time along the coast and islands of southern Alaska, 

 where the ravens live in the vicinity of sea-bird colonies, they make 

 an easy living by robbing the nests of gulls, murres, and cormorants. 

 As soon as a nest is left unprotected, the ravens dash in, seize an egg 

 or young bird, and fly off with it. When a man invades the colonies 

 all the sea birds leave their nests, and the ravens make repeated raids, 

 returning again and again to 'carry off egg after egg, concealing for 

 future use what they cannot eat at once. 



Theed Pearse mentions (MS.) some feeding habits of ravens on Van- 

 couver Island. He has seen them while feeding on the tidal flats "fly 

 up and down with a bump on wet sand and search the surrounding 

 area, presumably for sandworms disturbed." One was seen following 

 a grazing heifer, keeping close behind it and picj<ing up the insects dis- 

 turbed ; one appeared to follow right at the heels of the beast, "kept 

 looking up, then periodically it would fly up to the flank, either picking 

 up an insect or, as the action suggested, impatient at the slowness of 

 progress." He has also seen ravens following a plow, as the gulls do ; 

 and once he saw one "feeding on Saskatoon berries, from which it 

 drove away a flock of crows." He says, in its favor: "During the 

 years of great abundance here, there were broods of ducks raised close 

 to where there would be 20 or more ravens each day. I never saw 

 any sign of ravens attacking young birds or chickens, and the congested 

 area was all farm land with chickens running about the fields." 



J. A. Munro reports to me that the stomach of a raven, taken on 

 July 25 in British Columbia, contained a mass of blackberry pulp and 

 seeds, 90 percent, and the fragments of a shore crab ; another, taken 

 August 14, held 10 fly maggots, 70 percent, fragments of an amphibian, 

 two winged ants, and 3 seeds. 



Dr. Dickey (MS.) writes of the feeding habits of ravens in Penn- 

 sylvania: "Along the major rivers of the Appalachians I have noticed 

 that they frequent the banks of streams to procure dead animal matter 



