I06 MEMOIRS OF THE XUTTALL ORXITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



in my limited experience rather rare. It is one of the most distinct and 

 local of the autochthonous birds. 



200. Corvus nasicus Temminck. 

 Cuban Crow; Cao Montero. 



The Cuban Crow grows yearly less in numbers. Once common every- 

 where, today its range is very circumscribed. Gundlach killed a few about 

 Matanzas and Cardenas as late as 1850, but for years there have been 

 none within many miles of these towns. The forests on the south coast of 

 Camaguey and the Trinidad hills supported a few Crows as late as 1915, 

 while there were, and doubtless are, numbers still to be seen and heard 

 in the forest about the Cienaga, the Ensenada dc Cochinos, and along the 

 line of the Guantanamo and Western Railways, at Bayate and elsewhere. 

 This Crow babbles and chatters in infinite variety, like the Jamaican Crow, 

 and in no wise like any of our Continental forms — except the Raven. 

 While they evidently are dependent upon heavy forest, and disappear as 

 it is cut, still they do occasionally visit the plantations for fruit and grain 

 and to eat the palmiche of the royal palm. In the vicinity of wooded 

 mountains the Crows descend at morn and eve to the lowlands, often in 

 good-sized bands, retiring to the highland to pass the noon hours and the 

 night. A few years more of increased forest cutting may add this to the 

 list of extinct birds. 



201. Corvus minutus Gundlach. 

 Little Pine Crow; Cao Pinalero. 



Gundlach apparently did not consider this Crow very rare; he knew 

 of it in Pinar del Rio, Yaguaramas and the Trinidad hills. Since his day, 

 however, it had not been seen by naturalists until in 191 5 when dc la Torre 

 and I found it again. Today it is reduced to a few small bands in the lonely 

 arid hills with scattered pines, called Las Lomas de los Acostas, between 

 Guane and the port of La Esperanza. Here noisy, cawing bands, shrewd 

 and thieving, still visit the few poor little farms, always ready at the 



