The Raven in Southern New Hampshire, and Other Notes. — On the 
afternoon of July 4, 1903, while all the land was dim with fire-cracker 
smoke, a solitary Raven, coming who-knows-whence and going who- 
knows-whither, wandered over the rocky ridge of Mount Monadnock, 
in southwestern New Hampshire. I was sitting outside my camp, mid- 
way of the mountain ridge, and several times dimly heard the wanderer’s 
gruff, inarticulate croak, without recognizing it. In Norway or Sardinia, 
where I have known Corvus corax familiarly, this sound would have 
been instantly intelligible to me; but here, in the Massachusetts hill 
country of southernmost New Hampshire, unvisited by ravens for many 
a year, I was slow to grasp its meaning. Two companions were sitting 
near me, and I credited them with having facetiously uttered the ribald 
grunts. Nor did these companions at once arouse my interest by exclaim- 
ing : “See that crow over there ! ” I could n’t see him without moving, 
and sat still. But a peculiar and vaguely familiar heavy ‘swishing’ of 
wings, coupled with the news that the crow was persistently hovering 
over our provisions, brought me to my feet to have a look at the bird 
myself. Stepping around the cabin I beheld, not a crow, but a big, dingy 
raven, heavy-headed, huge-beaked, and deeply emarginate-winged. He 
was raspingly beating the air, thirty feet above my outspread provisions 
and cooking utensils, and scarcely ten paces from where I stood. 
Just so I have seen the European Raven flopping about over our vul- 
ture-baiting donkey carcass, in the hot fields of Sardinia, — hour-long, 
day after day. The scene was vividly recalled to me by this strayed 
carrion-biter of the North American wilderness. He was so strangely 
unsuspicious that he not only did not veer off when I appeared around 
the corner, but actually let me walk almost directly under him before he 
showed symptoms of alarm, and remitted his scrutiny of the victual- 
strewn ground. Then he started away to the northward along the moun- 
tain ridge, flying rather slowly and laboriously, with but little sailing, 
and presently disappeared behind a rocky knoll, on the northwest side of 
the mountain. 
iow s oparrovv anu uie onuri-unieu iviarsn wren, me sparrow is very 
rare in Dublin, though common in the lower and more alluvial meadows 
eight miles to the northeast (Hancock and Bennington). Mr. Hoffmann 
finds it a rare breeder in the Alstead Hills, about twenty miles northwest 
of Dublin. There also, both he and I have found the Yellow winged 
Sparrow breeding. 
The Raven in Southern New Hampshire: A Comment. — Apropos 
of my Monadnock Raven-record, published in ‘ The Auk,’ for October, 
1904 (p. 491), Mr. John E. Thayer writes me that a yearling Raven escaped 
from his aviary at Lancaster, Mass., less than forty miles southeast of 
Monadnock, on May 28, 1903, and disappeared after loitering about Lan- 
caster for almost a week. Probably, as Mr. Thayer suggests, it was this 
bird that appeared on Monadnock qn July 4. At all events, the likelihood 
that such was the case robs my record of all value. — Gerald H. Thayer, 
Monadnock, N. II. Ante, X £11, Jan., 1800, p . S' / • 
