A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DKVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Oroan or THE AUDUBON Sociitiii 



Vol. X September— October, 1908 No. 5 



A Raven's Nest 



By FRANCIS H. ALLEN 



THE accompanying picture shows a nest of the Northern Raven (Corvus 

 corax principalis), found on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, 

 on June 2 of the present year. Though plainly to be seen from the sea 

 and from some points on the rocky headlands near it, the nesting-site was hidden 

 from most of the neighboring shore, and it was only after a considerable search 

 that I succeeded in locating it. The nest was placed in a niche on the side of 

 an almost vertical cliff, perhaps forty feet in height, on a minor promontory 

 near one of the highest headlands on the eastern coast of the island, the narrow 

 shelf on which it rested being about twenty feet from the base of the cliff. Though 

 without a rope it was impossible to reach the nest, it could be approached quite 

 closely from above, and I found there two young Ravens walking awkwardly 

 back and forth on the shelf and in and out of the nest and looking about ner- 

 vously. They were apparently full-fledged, but I could not get them to fly. 

 Their bills appeared much heavier than Crows' bills, and the throat feathers 

 showed the pointed ends characteristic of the species. They had the yellow 

 mouth-corners of young birds. As long as I remained in the neighborhood 

 they were silent, and nothing was seen of the parent birds. 



When I visited the nest again, on June 4, the young had flown. Mr. Frederic 

 Dorr Steele, who, with a few others, accompanied me, let himself down by a 

 rope to the shelf where the nest was situated, and snapped his camera on it 

 with one hand while he held on by the rope with the other. He then descended 

 the cliff and photographed the nesting-site from below. The nest was composed 

 of dead spruce branches without the bark, gathered, doubtless, from the remains 

 of a burning near by, and was lined with usnea and sheep's wool. Wool is, I 

 understand, as inevitably found in Ravens' nests on the Maine coast as the 

 snake-skin in the Crested Flycatcher's nest. In this case it was perhaps a rem- 

 nant saved from the time when sheep were kept on the island, a number of years 

 ago, or it may have been brought from a distance. 



The next day I spent some time watching the Ravens, both the old birds and 

 the young, which lingered in the locality, about the cliffs and in the woods behind 



