and Mrs. Jay had taken upon herself the task of sitting, it was proposed to take 

 a photograph of the nest and bird through the overlooking window. Most 

 people will declare that nothing sweet in the way of sound ever issued from the 

 mouth of a blue jay. Nine-tenths of the year the jay's jargon is a pain to the 

 sensitive ear. During the rest of the time, however, the jay has one liquid note 

 which is as pleasing as almost any of Nature's sounds. Master Jay reserves 

 this sweet syllable for the benefit of Miss Jay, whom he hopes before May Day 

 will consent to change her estate in life. I think that I have heard the jay's voice 

 at its best and at its worst, but it was left for that morning when the photo- 

 grapher of the nest in the oak tree was to be taken for a certain Mrs. Jay to 

 outdo in loudness, harshness, and extent of vocabulary the vocal performance 

 of any bird to which I ever before had listened. 



It was the habit of Mr. Jay to come regularly and at short intervals to the 

 oak-tree home to feed his sitting spouse. It happened just as the formidable- 

 looking camera was being adjusted and focused on the sitting bird that the hus- 

 band arrived with a tidbit for his wife. He saw the frowning instrument and fled 

 incontinently. Then it was proposed to wait until he returned, so that a snap- 

 shot might be made of both birds while the feeding was in progress. The 

 patient photographer sat with one hand on the bulb, waiting for the reappearance 

 of the male. He did not come. The female sat on her nest, held there by mother 

 love, though there was a great fear in her eye as she looked at the gun-like affair 

 in the window above. An hour passed, and still Mr. Jay did not appear. He 

 was finally located by an interested observer in a tree at the far-off edge of the 

 lawn. He was keeping up his watch on the nest and on the infernal machine 

 in the window, but he dared not approach. An hour and a half had gone by. and 

 Mrs. Jay was getting hungry and restless. She had long since overcome her 

 fear of the camera. Two hours passed. Birds require a constant supply of 

 food and Mrs. Jay was at the famine point. Suddenly she spied her husband in 

 the tree beyond the flower beds. She left her nest and made for her spouse like 

 a flash. She perched just above his head, and then there followed a scolding and 

 berating that has no parallel in bird families. The madame called her husband a 

 lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing coward. She called his attention to the fact that 

 for two hours she had sat under the frowning face of the awful thing in the win- 

 dow, while he, lost to all jayhood and to all memory of courtship promises, had 

 not dared so much as approach the nesting-tree, even for the moment needed to 

 feed his faithful wife. For fully two minutes the air was filled with jay ejacula- 

 tions of wrath and contempt, and none of these ejaculations came from Mr. Jay. 

 He took the tirade meekly. The pitch of Mrs. Jay's voice, coupled with the choice 

 selection of adjectives which she hurled at her husband, brought an interested 

 audience, composed of all the bird residents of the neighborhood. Finally madame 

 broke ofif short and made her way back in all haste to cover her eggs from the 

 chill air of the morning. The instant his wife was ofif for home, Mr. Jay darted 

 down into a thicket and at once reappeared with a fat morsel of food with which 



351 



