114 THE CONDOR Vol. XXIII 
The crow is certainly one of our most sagacious birds, but, so far as I 
know, no one has ever found it storing away supples of any kind though it 
inhabits regions where in winter it is often put to it to make a living. Perhaps 
European crows are a bit ahead of their American cousins. At any rate I find 
a paragraph in Yarrell’s British Birds (vol. II, p. 288) which seems to prove 
that the habit is not entirely unknown to at least one member of the crow 
family, namely, the Black Crow (Corvus corone). Yarrell says of it: ‘‘Its 
method of hiding portions of food that cannot be conveniently eaten sug- 
gests an amount of forethought that can be pardonably exaggerated.’’ This 
statement regarding the Black Crow ealls to mind Dickens’ raven, or rather 
the compound of his two ravens, which he immortalized under the name of 
Gripp, and which he says had the habit of burying in the garden “‘cheese and 
halfpence’’. Gripp, however, was a remarkable bird in so many different 
ways that we need not wonder at this departure from the usual habits of his 
kind. | 
Our jays are mast eaters par excellence, and I believe that closer field 
observations will show that the habit of storing supplies is more common 
among them than we have been led to believe, particularly the species that 
winter in the colder regions. I am not aware that the Blue Jay, or, indeed, 
any of the species within our own boundaries have acquired the habit, but 
the Whiskey Jack of the far north, according to Richardson’, is fully alive to 
the importance of laying up food against the time of snow and extreme cold. 
He says of it: ‘‘It hoards berries, pieces of meat, etc., in hollow trees or be- 
tween layers of the bark of decaying branches, by which it is enabled to pass 
the season in comfort, and to rear its young before the snow is off the ground, 
and indeed earlier than-any other bird in the fur countries.’’ 
Turning now to the nuthatches we might confidently predict that such 
lovers of mast would have hit upon the storage plan, but data on the subject 
are not over plenty. In the History of North American Birds, by Baird, Brew- 
er and Ridgway, we find a note stating that ‘‘the European species collect and 
store away the fruit of the hazel and other nut-bearing trees’’, and I am sure 
that our own species, the white-belly, has been credited with the same habit, 
though I can find no direct reference to the subject. This would seem to indi- 
cate at least that the habit is not common. Dr. Chas. W. Richmond, however, 
informs me that not once but many times he has seen nuthatches, familiar 
guests at his lunch counter, bear off and store away peanuts and even suet in 
the crevices of the bark of trees and in the cracks left by the weathering out 
of the mortar in the walls of his house. This habit of storing suet in cracks 
in the bark of trees has been observed about Washington also by Dr. A. K. 
Fisher and Mr. McAtee. Ordinarily, however, it is probably true that the 
White-bellied Nuthatch, energetic worker as he is, finds no surplus to store, 
but has to devote all his energies to digging out today’s supplies without 
taking thought of tomorrow. Given the surplus, however, to draw upon, the 
bird’s instincts, as we see, are equal to the occasion. | 
To return to our California Woodpecker: I see no valid reason for aecept- 
ing the theory of the older ornithologists that the holes in the bark and dead 
limbs of trees were originally bored by the birds in the pursuit of insects. 
Apart from the fact, as has been dwelt upon, that this particular woodpecker 
*Fauna Boreali-Americana, 1831, p. 295. 
