NORTHERN BLUE JAY 47 



Comparatively few observers are familiar with the song of the blue 

 jay. When he sings, the jay throws off his boisterous demeanor. He 

 retires to the recesses of a wood or seeks seclusion in a thick evergreen 

 tree and there, all alone, sings his quiet solo. I have sometimes heard 

 a song from a bird hidden in a tangle of second-growth, and have not 

 at first recognized the author as a jay at all. The song is a potpourri 

 of faint whistles and various low, sweet notes, some in phrasing and 

 pitch, suggesting a robin's song — a mockingbird might be singing, sotto 

 voce. But as the song goes on one realizes that most of the notes are 

 clearly in the blue jay's repertoire but are disguised by being jumbled 

 together and delivered gently and peacefully. 



Francis H. Allen has noted the song several times in his journal. 

 He heard it first on February 28, 1909, the notes "coming from a row 

 of large hemlock trees. The bird was keeping in the very heart of the 

 tree, near the trunk. The notes sounded not unlike the goldfinch's song, 

 but very subdued in tone. The song consisted of sweet lisping notes 

 and chippering, and was continuous and long." Again he says: "Sweet 

 and rather loud song notes from a jay in one of our Norway spruces 

 this morning (September 4, 1933). One was a sort of short descending 

 trill, rather high pitched, that suggested a mockingbird." And on 

 March 22, 1935 : "Long subdued song from a jay in a hemlock. It 

 lasted two or three minutes, I should say, and was absolutely con- 

 tinuous, with no pauses between phrases. Some notes were very sug- 

 gestive of Spinas tristis, both the long upward-slurred note and a suc- 

 cession of short notes resembling per-chic-o-pee. The whole remarkably 

 soft and sweet. The bird remained hidden among the foliage, as is the 

 jay's custom in this sort of singing." 



Isabel Goodhue (1919) speaks of the song as "sweet, tender and 

 quite lovely ; delivered * * * with a retiring modesty not perc.eptible in 

 the Blue Jay's deportment on other occasions." 



The jay's loud cry often sounds exactly like the teearr of the red- 

 shouldered hawk. I have sometimes been misled and have mistaken 

 one note for the other. On more than one occasion I have supposed 

 I was listening to a hawk screaming in the distance but found that a jay 

 near at hand was the author of the notes. 



This similarity to the scream of the red-shouldered hawk and the 

 resemblance of some of the jay's notes to those of other birds have given 

 him a reputation as an imitator. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to 

 be sure that such cases are not coincidence, especially when we recall 

 the multiplicity of the jay's vocabulary. 



Enemies. — Jays are subject to attack from the smaller, quick-moving 

 hawks but appear in the main to be able to protect themselves. 



