242 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



comrades it is blown up and backward still nearer to me, 

 and it is obliged to tack four or five times just like a 

 vessel, a dozen rods or more each way, very deliberately, 

 first to the right, then to the left, before it can get off ; 

 for as often as it tries to fly directly forward against the 

 wind, it is blown upward and backward within gunshot, 

 and it only advances directly forward at last by stooping 

 very low within a few feet of the ground where the trees 

 keep off the wind. Yet the wind is not remarkably 

 strong. 



Dec. 30, 1860. I saw the crows a week ago perched 

 on the swamp white oaks over the road just beyond 

 Wood's Bridge, and many acorns and bits of bark and 

 moss, evidently dropped or knocked off by them, lay on 

 the snow beneath. One sat within twenty feet over my 

 head with what looked like a piece of acorn in his bill. 

 To-day I see that they have carried these same white 

 oak acorns, cups and all, to the ash tree by the riverside, 

 some thirty rods southeast, and dropped them there. 

 Perhaps they find some grubs in the acorns, when they 

 do not find meat. The crows now and of late frequent 

 thus the large trees by the river, especially swamp white 

 oak, and the snow beneath is strewn with bits of bark 

 and moss and with acorns (commonly worthless). They 

 are foraging. Under the first swamp white oak in Hub- 

 bard's great meadow (Cyanean) I see a little snap-turtle 

 (shell some one and a quarter inches in diameter — on his 

 second year, then) on its back on the ice — shell, legs, 

 and tail perfect, but head pulled off, and most of the 

 inwards with it by the same hole (where the neck was). 

 What is left smells quite fresh, and this head must have 



