36 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



orchards, pastures, and pine woods as well as thick woods, are nesting 

 localities of this bird. One nest was placed in a tree crotch not more than 

 six feet from a bed-room window, thus one might look out on the bird 

 as she sat calmly upon her eggs, and later she was not noticeably nerv- 

 ous while feeding her nestlings before an audience of several persons 

 who observed the performance from the window." 



I remember some years ago seeing a nest containing eggs in a situation 

 with no concealment whatever — on the cross-beam of an electric-light 

 pole. The pole stood near a flight of steps used continually by pedestrians 

 in crossing over the tracks at the main railroad station in Lexington, 

 Mass. From the steps I might have touched the sitting bird with an 

 umbrella. Needless to say, the nest was soon knocked down, presumably 

 by boys. 



On June 12, 1942, in Tiverton, R. I., Roland C. Clement showed us a 

 most unusual blue jay's nest under the overhang of a cutbank beside a 

 woodland road, which held at that time a brood of nearly fledged young. 

 As he did not get a chance to photograph it, he has sent us the following 

 description of it : "The recessed face of the cutbank in which the nest is 

 placed lies only 10 feet from the farm road, the cut itself being about 6 

 feet high and its concavity amounting to about 10 inches two feet below 

 the overhanging brink. In this sheltered recess two stout oak roots of 1 

 inch diameter reach out horizontally into space, intersecting past their 

 exerted centers, and in this crotch our adaptable jays have firmly 

 anchored an otherwise typical nest. The nest is thus about 4 feet 

 from the ground below and, though not absolutely secure from molesta- 

 tion by terrestrial predators which could probably clamber up to it 

 without undue difficulty because of the moderate incline of the bank, 

 it is indeed inconspicuous among the pendant roots and rootlets of the 

 vegetation above, which presently consists merely of shrubs such as 

 Corylus and Myrica. 



"The nest itself is well and firmly woven of long, pliant dead twigs of 

 various species, including some spiny stems of Smilax and a few culms 

 of coarse grass, as well as a long strip of paper ; and it is lined with fine 

 rootlets, probably those of the brake fern (Pteris), which abounds near- 

 by. The nest cavity is 4^ inches long, parallel to the bank, and 4 

 inches wide." 



Mrs. Harriet Carpenter Thayer (1901) watched the family life of a 

 pair of blue jays at a nest at close range and states that the male aided 

 in making the nest and that both birds incubated, "each relieving the 

 other at more or less regular intervals. And the bird at play did not 

 forget its imprisoned mate, but returned now and then with a choice bit 

 of food, which was delivered with various little demonstrations of sym- 

 pathy and aflfection." 



