PICICORVUS COLUMBLVNDS. 515 



permission to shoot one for our collection. Later in the same montli a 

 very few — perhaps less than half a dozen individuals— were found at the 

 Truckee Meadows, Avhere they frequented the willows along the rivei-. 

 These also were very tame, but except in this regard seemed to be ex- 

 actly like the Crow of the Eastern States, the notes being quite identical.' 



List of specimens. 



256, (J ad.; Huiuboklt Meadows (Camp 22), October 31, 18G7. 19— (?)— 12i— 10— 

 (?) — 2 — 7 — ii. Bill, tarsi, and toes, deep black ; iris, hazel. 



203, (J a<l.; Camp 20, Truckee Meadows, November 8, 18C7. Willows, alonj,' river. 

 11'^ — 37 — 12^ — lOi — 2 — 2 — 'i\ — 4|. Bill, tarsi, and toes, deep black; iris, deep van- 

 dyke ; interior of mouth (except corneous portions), deep flesh-color. 



PiCICORVUS COLUMBIANUS. 

 Clarke's Nutcracker. 



{Pah'-bup of the Washoes ; Toh'-o-kotz of the Shoshones.) 



Corvus colvmbianus, Wilson, Am. Orn., Ill, 1811, 29, pi. xx, fig. 2. 



Picicorvus cohimbianus, BoNAP., Consp. Av., I, 1850, 384. — Baird, B. N. Am., 

 1858, 573, 925; Cat. N. Am. B., 1859, No. 430.— Cooi'KR, Orii. Cal., I, 289.— 

 COUES, Key, 1872, 1G2, fig. 104; Check List, 1873, No. 230; B. N.W., 1874, 

 207.— B. B. & 11., Hist. N. Am. B.. 11, 255, pi. xxxviii, fig. 4.— IIknshaw, 

 1875, 328. 



The dense forest of lofty pines and kindred trees on the Sierra Nevada 

 was where this remarkable bird most abounded, but it was also found to the 

 eastward wherever extensive coniferous woods occurred, it being common 

 on the Wahsatch and Uintah ranges, and rare on the intermediate Ruby 

 Mountains ; but it was never seen except among the pines, which seem 

 necessary to its existence. The habits and manners of this bird deviate so 

 widely from those of the family to which it belongs that no one would sus- 

 pect its true relationship ; it acts like a Woodpecker, screams like a Wood- 

 pecker, and looks so much like one that the best ornithologists are apt to 

 be misled, by the first glimpse of it, into believing it an undescribed species 



' Mr. E. W. Nelson informs me that in November he noticed the Crows exhibiting 

 the same familiarity at Sacramento City, where they were seen about the door-yards 

 and corrals of houses in the suburbs. 



