The approach of spring is also indicated by the crows and buzzards, which rapidly multiply in the environs of the city, and grow bold and demonstrative. The crows are abundant here all winter, but are not very noticeable except as they pass high in air to and from their winter quarters in the Virginia woods. Early in the morning, as soon as it is light enough to discern them, there they are, streaming eastward across the sky, now in loose, scattered flocks, now in thick dense masses, then singly and in pairs or triplets, but all setting in one direction, probably to the waters of eastern Maryland. Toward night they begin to return, flying in the same manner, and directing their course to the wooded heights on the Potomac, west of the city. In spring these diurnal mass movements cease; the clan breaks up, the rookery is abandoned, and the birds scatter broadcast over the land. This seems to be the course everywhere pursued. One would think that, when food was scarcest, the policy of separating into small bands or pairs, and dispersing over a wide country, would prevail, as a few might subsist where a larger number would starve. The truth is, however, that, in winter, food can be had only in certain clearly defined districts and tracts, as along rivers and the shores of bays and lakes. A few miles north of Newburgh, on the Hudson, the crows go into winter quarters in the same manner, flying south in the morning and returning again at night, sometimes hugging the hills so close during a strong wind as to expose themselves to the clubs and stones of schoolboys ambushed behind trees and fences. The belated ones, that come laboring along just at dusk, are often so overcome by the long journey and the strong current that they seem almost on the point of sinking down whenever the wind or a rise in the ground calls upon them for an extra effort.