. Birds of Massachusetts and other New England states. Birds; Birds. STARLINGS 403 like a gull, when it discovers food in the water below it. When, in early spring, a small Crow is seen which cries like a young one, the presumption is that it is a Fish Crow. Some Fish Crows breed here and there on Long Island and in southern Connecticut, and in early spring when the ale wives begin to run up the streams of Plymouth and Barn- stable Counties, Massachusetts, a small number of Fish Crows, migrating eastward, follow FISH CROW ^SUMMER. KET Status op the Fish Crow in Massachusetts. There are no Bree
. Birds of Massachusetts and other New England states. Birds; Birds. STARLINGS 403 like a gull, when it discovers food in the water below it. When, in early spring, a small Crow is seen which cries like a young one, the presumption is that it is a Fish Crow. Some Fish Crows breed here and there on Long Island and in southern Connecticut, and in early spring when the ale wives begin to run up the streams of Plymouth and Barn- stable Counties, Massachusetts, a small number of Fish Crows, migrating eastward, follow FISH CROW ^SUMMER. KET Status op the Fish Crow in Massachusetts. There are no Breeding Records the alewives up to the head of Buzzards Bay and along the coast of Cape Cod where the species has been noted as far east and north as North Truro, near Provincetown. In company with my friend, Mr. J. A. Farley, I saw on one oc- casion in 1905 sixteen of these birds feeding on tide flats at Wareham, and have seen them not infrequently there in spring, but I have never seen courting, pairing or breeding, though I have searched for their nests. Now and then one may stray north up the Connecticut Valley into Massachusetts. The species has been recorded north of Boston where it was seen in Cambridge by William Brewster, March 16, 1875.^ It was reported also by Mr. Richards at Nahant. Economic Status. The status of this species resembles that of the common Crow, except that it is seldom inimical to the interests of agriculture and is more destructive to the eggs of water-birds. Family STURNID^. Starlings. Number of species in North America 1; in Massachusetts 1. This family is confined normally to the Old World, but has no aboriginal representa- tives in Australia or New Guinea. Birds of this group have 10 primaries, the first very short or spurious but not obsolete. The bill is shaped somewhat like those of our black- birds and orioles, but is longer, and wider at base; it has a hard scale over each nostril. 1 Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, Vol. I, 1876, p
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