20 4 TIIE ZOOLOGIST. 



Penn, Del., is two miles long, and contains about sixty-five acres 

 of rnarsh-land. There are no trees or bushes, but the reed- 

 grass grows very thickly upon the island. The Crows occupy 

 about twenty acres, breaking down the reeds, which are from 

 seven to nine feet tall, and roosting upon the broken stems." 



Dr. John D. Godman has left some valuable observations 

 upon the Crow, and as he lived for a time in Anne Arundel 

 County, Md., only three or four miles from the Arbutus roost 

 (described later), it was no doubt the ancestors of these Crows 

 that he observed. " The roost is most commonly the densest 

 pine-thicket that can be found, generally at no great distance 

 from some river, bay, or other sheet of water which is last to 

 freeze or rarely is altogether frozen. To such a roost the Crows, 

 which are during the daytime scattered over, perhaps, more than 

 a hundred miles of circumference, wing their way every after- 

 noon, and arrive shortly after sunset." Mr. S. W. PJiodes gives 

 personal observations of a colony near Merchantville, Camden 

 Co., N. J., which occupies oak-trees twenty feet high, covering 

 fifteen or twenty acres of ground. 



Dr. Coues says : — " In settled parts of the country the Crow 

 tends to colonise, and some of its ' roosts ' are of vast extent. 

 Mine is on the Virginia side of the Potomac, near Washington." 

 Concerning this roost, a newspaper writer, " Invisible," tells us, 

 among many highly-coloured items, that " for an unknown 

 period of time, probably ever since the Potomac Valley was 

 settled, if not long before, the woods of ' Cooney,' the old ante- 

 bellum popular term for that part of Alexandria and Fairfax 

 counties bordering on the Potomac, have been occupied by a vast 

 colony of Crows. They now roost in the grand old oaks at 

 Arlington. Years ago they occupied a strip of pines that grew 

 back of the river above Georgetown." 



Mr. H. W. Henshaw, of Washington, who has known of this 

 roost for about sixteen years, tells me that the Crows about 

 Washington come in from the surrounding territory by three 

 main streams, the largest coming from the south, down the 

 river ; the next in size from the east, flying over the city, and 

 probably feeding along the shores of the Eastern Branch of the 

 Potomac ; and the third, scattering, from the west and south-west 

 in Virginia. During cold or stormy days they do not disperse so 

 widely, and stay about on the Potomac flats near the city. Last 



