CROWS, JAYS, MAGPIES, ETC. 
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the Black Hills and eastern slopes of the rocky Mountains to the Pacific. 
Casual from Dakota through Kansas, Missouri, ami Arkansas. 
Nest. — In evergreens 8 to 40 feet from the ground, composed of twigs 
and white sage, bound together by strips of inner bark, lined with fine 
strips of bark, grasses, and pine needles. Eggs: 3 to 5, pale green, mi¬ 
nutely and sparingly marked with brown, gray, and lavender, either most 
heavily around the larger end, evenly distributed, or with the lower half 
unspotted. 
Food. — In winter, seeds of conifers ; at other seasons, berries, lupine 
seeds, insect larvae, butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles, and the destructive 
black cricket. The young are fed on hulled pine seeds. 
What an independent, positive character the nutcracker is! In the 
mountains the sound of his rattling kar’r’r, kar'r’r, as he comes 
flying in with strong, free flight, leading a black and white liveried 
band through the treetops, always stirs the blood with memories 
and anticipations, for he is associated with the mountain-tops, where 
the conies bleat and the glacial streams flow only when the sun is 
high. 
Living mainly on the crests of the ranges, the birds fly to the 
high peaks to get the first rays of the sun, and when warmed go for 
food and water to lower slopes. Their method of getting down is 
startling at first sight. Launching out from a peak with bill pointed 
downward and wings closed they drop like a bullet for a thousand 
feet to the brook where they wish to drink. Sometimes they make 
the descent at one long swoop, at other times in a series of pitches, 
each time checking their fall by opening their wings and letting 
themselves curve upward before the next straight drop. They fall 
with such a high rate of speed that when they open their wings 
there is an explosive burst which echoes from the canyon walls. 
On Mt. Hood the Clarke crows stay with the Oregon jays around 
Cloud Cap Inn, under the peak. On Mt. Shasta a few of them come 
into the fir belt as low as 5750 feet, but while we were there the 
majority we saw were with the alpine hemlocks and the dwarf pines 
of timberline, from 7750 to 8300 feet. They ate green caterpillars 
in the hemlocks and caught grasshoppers on the neighboring rocky 
slopes. In places they are seen flying about among the dwarf pines 
carrying the cones in their bills to branches where they can get at 
the seeds by hammering off the scales. In the Sierra Nevada in fall 
they feed largely on the seeds of Pinus monticola, and at such times 
their movements are irregular, depending on the supply of pine 
cones. When feeding it is amusing to watch them. As you walk 
along the edge of the timber a flash of white and the sound of flap¬ 
ping wings overhead call your attention in time to see the bird 
light with a jet of the tail and a jerk of the wings on a terminal 
cluster of cones. He hardly gets his balance so that his figure 
