198 Bergtold, The Crow in Colorado. [ April 



THE CROW IN COLORADO. 



BY W. H. BERGTOLD. 



A study of the technical status, and distribution of the Crow in 

 Colorado discloses, at once, an interesting, and a peculiar situa- 

 tion. 1 



The Crow was first recorded in Colorado, so far as 1 am able to 

 learn, by Aiken (1), who reported it in this State in 1872 under 

 the name Corvus amerieanus; thereafter several other writers 

 mentioned the bird, as having been found in Colorado : — Ridgway 

 in 1877 (2), Stephens in 1878 (3), and Drew in 1881 and 1885 (4), 

 all using the same name employed by Aiken. 



Ridgway (5) erected the subspecies hesperis in 1887, at that time 

 giving its range substantially as outlined today by the A. O. U. 

 'Check-List'; the validity of this subspecies was not admitted 

 by the A. O. U. Committee until July, 1908 (6). In his original 

 description of the new subspecies (hesperis) Ridgway did not state 

 how many skins he examined nor whence they came, but gave 

 as the eastern limit of the new subspecies "east to the Rocky 

 Mountains," while in his later account (7) of hesperis, for which he 

 utilized twenty-three skins for study purposes, he carefully quali- 

 fies the eastern limit by adding "from the Eastern portion of the 

 arid region?" It is to be noted that he did not definitely mention 

 Colorado as being included within the hesperis area; in his coinci- 

 dental review of the literature possibly related to the new sub- 

 species, however, all citations of previous records of Colorado Crows 

 are grouped under the literature of subspecies hesperis. This 

 probably was done because he did not have time to sift out the 

 records relating to the eastern slope from those of the western 

 slope so as to place them under the literature relating to the indi- 

 vidual subspecies. So far as Colorado is concerned in this question, 

 Ridgway probably did not take this matter up in detail because 



1 My thanks are due to the following friends who made it possible for me to study crow 

 skins from parts of the State not covered by my own collection; L. A. Adams, A. H. Felger, 

 J. D. Figgins, F. C. Lincoln, E R. Warren, Witmer Stone, and to my various friends for 

 permitting me to quote them in the body of this paper. 



