68 BUILDS AN OPEN NEST. 
chorus, and spoils the melody. If reposing on the 
soft warm sandy beach in dreamy reveries, listen- 
ing to the lip-lap of the ripple, and thoroughly 
enjoying the quietude of surrounding nature, a 
flock of roystering crows are sure to alight on the 
rocks close by, and do their best to display their 
vocal capabilities. It surely must have been one 
of the British-Columbian crows that quaint old 
AKsop knew ! 
They also go farther inland to breed, building 
their nests of sticks in low bushes, often not 
four feet from the ground, where there are no 
tall trees. I saw one little stream, east of the 
Cascades, where the low alder-bushes growing 
along its banks were quite as thickly filled 
with the nests of the Barking Crow as the trees 
in an English rookery are with rooks’ nests. 
I could look into some of them, and into all 
readily put my hand without climbing; the 
sticks are neatly crossed and piled together, 
and the interior lined with grass stalks, hair, 
bits of lichen, and dry leaves; the nests are open 
at the top, and five was the greatest number of 
egos I saw in a nest. The Barking Crow is 
found in every part of British Columbia or Van- 
couver Island, and the lesser islands in the Gulf 
of Georgia; simply changing their quarters from 
