GREEN JAY 131 



The descriptions of the eggs, as given by others, are not very different. 

 Mr. Sennett (1878) says that "the ground-color is usually light drab, 

 tinged faintly with green, but I have one egg out of a set of four with 

 the color dull yellowish-white. The markings are brown, sometimes dis- 

 tinctly spotted or speckled or streaked, and sometimes quite indistinct 

 and clouded." Dr. Merrill (1876) mentions one that "differed in hav- 

 ing the markings most numerous at the smaller end." The measure- 

 ments of 70 eggs in the United States National Museum average 27.31 

 by 20.43 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 

 30.8 by 21.8, 24.9 by 20.3, and 25.9 by 19.1 millimeters. 



Plumages. — Dr. Herbert Friedmann (1925) found a nest containing 

 four young birds about four days old. "The young were still blind but 

 the primary and sec.ondary quills were beginning to sprout and were 

 dull bluish in color. The top of the head and the spinal tract (both 

 the skin and the neossoptiles) were greenish gray in color." 



I have seen no very young birds, but Ridgway (1904) describes the 

 Juvenal plumage as foUov/s: "Pileum, hindneck, and malar patch 

 greenish blue, the forehead and palpebral spots similar but paler, and 

 the nasal tufts darker; black of chin, throat, chest, etc., much duller 

 than in adults ; under parts of body very pale yellowish green or greenish 

 yellow anteriorly, fading on flanks, abdomen, under tail-coverts, etc., 

 into very pale creamy yellow ; otherwise like adults." 



Food. — Austin Paul Smith (1910) charges the green jay with feeding 

 on the eggs and young of various small birds, suc.h as thrashers, orioles, 

 sparrows, wrens, chats and mockingbirds, and that, outside of the 

 nesting season, it feeds "mostly on seeds and insects. In winter the 

 seeds of the Ebony (Siderocarpiis) is the main reliance ; also in less 

 quantity the fruit of the Palmetto, to secure which they will travel far 

 into the open." 



Cottam and Knappen (1939) have given us the most detailed ac- 

 count of the food of this jay as follows: 



Smith's indictment is not confirmed by the only previous record of stomach con- 

 tents with which the writers are famiHar — that from Vernon Bailey's field notes for 

 April-May 1900, at Brcn\'nsville, Texas : 'Stomach contained one grasshopper, 

 beetles, small insects, and part of a kernel of corn.' Except for the corn this food 

 listed by Bailey is similar to that found by us in the stomach of a Green Jay col- 

 lected by Dr. Francis Harper near Norias, Texas, on August 17, 1929. One per 

 cent of the food consisted of fragments of two seeds of a bristlegrass (Setaria ? 

 grisebachii) , seed fragments of pricky-ash (Xanthoxylum clava-herciiUs), and un- 

 determined plant fiber. The remainder of the food was animal in origin, including 

 fragments of: sixteen or more stink bugs (Brochymena sp.), 79%; several coreid 

 bugs (Acanthocephala sp.), 8%; finely ground indeterminable bugs (Heteroptera), 

 trace; a short-horned grasshopper nymph (Acrididae), 1%; a field cricket nymph 

 (Gryllus assimilis), 1%; a hymenopteran, trace; indeterminable insect, trace; and 

 a fragment of a spider, 1%. Gravel formed 1% of the gross contents. 



