SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



Most of these crows tliat spend the winter 

 at the seashore go elsewhere in summer, and 

 on pleasant days in the early spring I have 

 seen the departure of some of them. On a 

 March morning, just as the sun came from 

 behind some clouds, a flock of thirty or forty 

 crows rose from the dimes, circled irregularly 

 upwards imtil they were mere specks in the 

 sky, when they all started off in a direct course 

 for the northeast. An hour later a flock of 

 twenty-seven rose from the marsh and did 

 likewise. Crows are social beings, and even 

 in the midst of the breeding season flocks of 

 fifteen or twenty adults often feed together. 



The crow is commonly accredited with only 

 one note,— the notorious caw. That he pos- 

 sesses this note, no one will deny, but he also 

 has numerous other notes, and indeed his 

 vocabulary is an extensive one. As a song- 

 ster, however, he is not a success. Conversa- 

 tional notes and tones of every description 

 issue from his throat, and nothing is more 

 entertaining than the varied notes exchanged 

 by a family of these birds, now low and con- 

 fidential, sometimes pleasing or slightly melo- 

 dious, again raucous and scolding, even tor- 

 rential in their abusiveness. The notes are so 



90 



