Vol. XXI 

 1904 



J General Notes. 49 1 



that could have served man better outside of a bird, and it constituted 

 only 5% of the contents of one stomach, or only one-fortieth or one- 

 fiftieth of the food of the two. Otherwise the insects eaten were either 

 neutral or potentially or actually harmful. A great per cent of the whole 

 was in the last class, and some of the species eaten are tremendously 

 injurious to grape culture. 



The feeding habits of the birds may, from the present knowledge, be 

 declared practically entirely beneficial. In return it seems not too much 

 to expect that we should without complaint furnish, for a few days in the 

 year, the drink to wash the great numbers of our insect enemies down to 

 their destruction ; and to consider these two little fellows as among the 

 worthiest as they are among the prettiest of our warbler friends. — \V. F. 

 McAtee, Washingto7i, D. C. 



The Raven in Southern New Hampshire, and Other Notes. — On the 



afternoon of July 4, 1903, while all the land was dim with fire-cracker 

 smoke, a solitary Raven, coming who-knows-whence and going who- 

 knows-whither, wandered over the rocky ridge of Mount Monadnock, 

 in southwestern New Hampshire. I was sitting outside my camp, mid- 

 way of the mountain ridge, and several times dimly heard the wanderer's 

 gruff, inarticulate croak, without recognizing it. In Norway or Sardinia, 

 where I have known Corviis corax familiarly, this sound would have 

 been instantly intelligible to me; but here, in the Massachusetts hill 

 country of southernmost New Hampshire, unvisited by ravens for many 

 a year, I was slow to grasp its meaning. Two companions were sitting 

 near me, and I credited them with having facetiously uttered the ribald 

 grunts. Nor did these companions at once arouse my interest by exclaim- 

 ing : "See that crow over there! " I could n't see him without moving, 

 and sat still. But a peculiar and vaguely familiar heavy 'swishing' of 

 wings, coupled with the news that the crow was persistently hovering 

 over our provisions, brought me to my feet to have a look at the bird 

 myself. Stepping around the cabin I beheld, not a crow, but a big, dingy 

 raven, heavy-headed, huge-beaked, and deeplj' emarginate-winged. He 

 was raspingly beating the air, thirtj^ feet above my outspread provisions 

 and cooking utensils, and scarcely ten paces from where I stood. 



Just so I have seen the European Raven flopping about over our vul- 

 ture-baiting donkey carcass, in the hot fields of Sardinia, — hour-long, 

 day after day. The scene was vividly recalled to me by this strayed 

 carrion-biter of the North American wilderness. He was so strangely 

 unsuspicious that he not only did not veer off when I appeared around 

 the corner, but actually let me walk almost directly under him before he 

 showed symptoms of alarm, and rem.itted his scrutiny of the victual- 

 strewn ground. Then he started away to the northward along the moun- 

 tain ridge, flying rather slowlj' and laboriously, with but little sailing, 

 and presently disappeared behind a rocky knoll, on the northwest side of 

 the mountain. 



