Corvus arner icanus . 
Cambridge 
1893. 
J an .10. 
Mass. 
This thicket (by the old Coolidge lane ), when I first 
sighted it this morning, was simply black with Crows feasting 
on the abundant privet berries. When they saw me and flew 
others joined them from the fields beyond where there were 
steaming manure heaps and full fifty of the big black birds 
whirled and circled over the crest of the hill for a moment, 
a fine sight. Most of the Crows just mentioned flew off 
over the marshes at the first alarm but a few scattered among 
the trees and evaded me by short flights. They 'were sur- 
prisingly tame and twice I got within less than thirty yards 
of one, once walking directly under the bird as he sat perched 
on a dead branch. One or more of them repeated, at frequent 
intervals, a rolling cry almost exactly like that of the Tree 
Toad. Indeed had it been summer I should not have doubted 
that the sound was made by a Tree Toad although it 'was a lit- 
* 
tie louder and stronger. 
