THE DESCHUTES RAVEN 37 



along the flanks of the Summit peaks. In so open 

 a region, of course, he is well seen. Everybody 

 notices him, and nobody at first knows what to 

 make of him. One guesses he must be a wood- 

 pecker ; another a crow or some sort of jay ; 

 another a magpie. He seems to be a pretty thor- 

 oughly mixed and fermented compound of all 

 these birds, has all their strength, cunning, shyness, 

 thievishness, and wary, suspicious curiosity com- 

 bined and condensed." 



I took it from this account that if in my moun- 

 tain climbing I got a long-distance glimpse of 

 the Clarke crow, 1 could count myself lucky, for 

 isn't he the wildest of birds? On the contrary, I 

 was amazed to find the wary creature almost 

 eating out of my hand at Cloud Cap Inn, half- 

 way up the side of Mount Hood. Here, on the 

 timber-line, in the haunt of these birds, was a 

 house, and human visitors in the summer, who fed 

 the crows, and who had so far tamed them as to 

 make them almost as familiar as chickens, much 

 more sociable and trusting than our Eastern blue 

 jays or our common crows. 



If this can be done to the Clarke crow in the 

 remote summits, it ought to be possible to tame 



