BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 237 



Mr. Maynard met with a Canada Jay at Nevvtonville, in early summer, about 

 twenty-fiv^e years ago,^ and there is a mounted specimen in the Essex County 

 collection of the Peabody Academy at Salem, Massachusetts, which was shot 

 near that city on October 25, 1878.^ 



[Corvus corax principalis Ridgvv. Northern Raven. Wood, writing in 1634 of tlie 

 biids which he found in New England, sa^'s : ^ "The Ravens, and Crowes be much like them 

 of other Countries," and Josseljn, in the ' Two Voyages," published in 1674, asserts'' that "the 

 Raven is here numerous." From these statements, and from those of certain more recent authors 

 which need not be cited here, we may infer that the Raven was common and generally distrib- 

 uted throughout the coast region of eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with that of 

 southern Maine, when the country was first settled. We may further assume, with reasonable 

 safety, that Wood saw the bird very near, if not actually in, the Cambridge Region, for he lived 

 at 'Saugus' (now Lynn) during most of his stay in the colony, and his te.xt indicates that he 

 must have repeatedly visited the country lying about Cambridge and Boston.] 



129. Corvus brachyrhynchos C. L. Brehm. 

 American Crow. Crow. 



Common permanent resident and abundant transient visitor in spring and autumn. 



NESTING DATES. 



April 15 — 28. 



The Crow is the only large bird which can be seen every day in the year 

 throughout the Cambridge Region. Here it has not only held its ground, in 

 spite of the cutting down of woods and orchards and the multiplication of houses, 

 but during the past quarter of a century it has apparently increased in numbers 

 and has certainly extended its local breeding range. In my younger days Crows 

 seldom alighted anywhere in the neighborhood of our place and none were ever 

 known to nest there, although they bred regularly on the Norton estate, where 

 there were rather extensive and really primitive woods, as well as at Elmwood, 

 which was then on the extreme outskirts of the city proper. At that time we 

 often found Crows' nests in the Pine Swamp, and in the cedar and pitch pine 

 woods to the westward of Mount Auburn, while the birds paid frequent preda- 

 te. J. Maynard, Birds of Eastern North America, pt. vii, 1878, 168. 



2 W. Brewster, H. D. Minot, I.and-birds and Game-birds of New England, ed. 2, 1895, 474-475, 

 Appendix. 



^ William Wood, New Englands Prospect, ed. 2, 1635, 25. Charles Deane's ed., 1865, 32. 



•• John Josselyn, Two Voyages to New-England, ed. 2, 1675, 98. W. Veazie's reprint, 1865, 78. 



