TEXAS I AY 113 



"During the winter months they are found in large numbers in the 

 brush-clad gulches and ravines in the lower part of their range and 

 usually not far from cultivated ground, where they feed largely upon 

 grain and seed in the barn-yards, feedlots and fields. During this period 

 they become very tame if not molested and will even occasionally slip 

 into an open kitchen door in quest of some tempting morsel." 



APHiJLOCOMA COERULESCENS TEXANA Ridgway 

 TEXAS JAY 



HABITS 



This race seems to be confined to central and central-western Texas, 

 from Kerr and Edwards Counties to the Davis Mountains. It is a con- 

 necting link between A. c. woodhousei and A. c. cyanotis, intergrading 

 with the former to the northward and with the latter to the southward. 

 The blue-eared jay (cyanotis) was formerly supposed to occur casually 

 in Texas, but subsequent investigation by Dr. Oberholser (1917) has 

 shown this to be an error, and this race was dropped from our list. 



The Texas jay differs from Woodhouse's jay in having the chest 

 and lower throat very indistinctly, if at all, streaked with blue, by the 

 paler gray of the under parts, and by the pure white under tail coverts, 

 the latter being blue in woodhousei. 



The type of this race was collected near the head of the Nueces River, 

 in Edwards County, Tex., presumably by Howard Lacey (1903), who 

 says: "In December, 1894, when deer hunting on the head of the 

 Nueces Ricer, I shot and skinned one of these birds and sent it to the 

 professor [H. P. Attwater]. He sent it on, I believe, to the late Captain 

 Bendire, and it is now the type of the species." Attwater was credited 

 with collecting the specimen. 



Mr. Lacey was, evidently, the first to collect the eggs of this jay; in 

 April 1898, near the head of one of the main branches of the Guadaloupe 

 River. He says of the locality: 



Numerous little valleys run down toward the rivers, becoming steeper and 

 steeper as they approach the larger creek, and often forming narrow canyons with 

 high bluffs on both sides. Large trees are not numerous, but the whole face of 

 the country is covered with clumps of shin oak and scrubby live oak. In these 

 clumps we found the jays' nests, generally placed near the outside of a thicket, at 

 from four to six feet from the ground, and often conspicuous from quite a distance, 

 as the shrubs were only beginning to put out their leaves at that time. As a rule 

 the birds were setting and one nest contained young nearly ready to leave it. The 

 nests were composed of an outer basket of twigs not very firmly put together, 

 and lined rather neatly with grass, hair, and small root fibres. They were rather 

 more bulky than mockingbirds' nests and the inner nest was saucer shaped rather 

 than cup shaped. Most of them were placed in shin oaks, but some few were in 

 live oaks, and I have since found several in cedar bushes. The birds are not 

 so noisy as the common blue jay and are particularly silent when near their nests. 



