192 THE BIRDS 
SUBFAMILY CORVIN/AE.—CROWS. 
GENUS COoRVUS. 
[486-A]. Corvus corax principalis (Ridgway). 
Northern Raven. 
Rance.—Northwestern Alaska, Melville Island, 
northern Ellesmere Land, and northern Greenland south 
to Washington, central Minnesota, Michigan, and coast 
region of New Jersey, and in the higher Alleghenies south 
through Virginia to Georgia. 
This is one of the birds that has been driven from our 
seacoast entirely, until now it is a rare bird with us cven 
in the mountain regions, where only a few scattered pairs 
remain. There are two reasons why these birds have left 
our coast; first, on account of the large heron rookeries 
formerly on the islands having vanished, from which they 
procured eges and voung as food; second, on account of 
the spring gunning and egging on the islands. The 
inhabitants killed them on account of stealing eggs from 
the beach bird colonies, while the gunners found they 
made their presence known when in the blinds and scared 
the beach birds coming to the decoys. They, like the 
Fish Crows, were good scavengers along our coastal 
beaches, but destroved untold numbers of the eges and 
voung of all species anywhere near their home. The nest 
is a large, bulky affair of sticks, lined with hair, wool, 
or fine bark fiber, placed in a tree or on a shelf of a 
cliff. Four to five eggs is a full set, the ground a light 
greenish-gray, spotted and blotched with various shades 
of brown, with fainter markings of lilac. Size of eggs, 
