274 Old White Wing 
family cares lessening his well-known vigilance, he 
might be captured. 
During the spring I made a close study of Old 
White Wing and his band, and I soon became con- 
vinced that he was no common crow. The third 
week in March the band became very noisy, and 
soon there were signs of departing for their summer 
homes. The noise was due to a general meeting 
of the crows of the roost, and a kind of introduction 
among the young crows, preliminary to mating. The 
males were performing strange gymnastics in the air 
and indulging in short contests of flight before their 
admiring lady birds. Now was the season for me to 
discover Old White Wing’s domestic secrets. 
Early one morning, as I was returning from a 
search for owls, and was about to emerge from a 
deep ravine at the foot of Hall’s Hill, Isaw a crow 
flying up the valley toward the place where I was 
standing. The sides of the ravine were covered with 
deciduous and evergreen trees and a dense growth 
of underbrush, and farther up the ravine the large 
trees were mostly hemlocks, an ideal situation for a 
crow’s nest. As I had not been seen by the bird, I 
stepped behind a cluster of trees and waited. In a 
few moments the crow passed, and I saw that it 
was Old White Wing. I believed that now I had a 
