feathered tribes of the neighborhood to witness some outrageous usage he had 

 received. When he hops undisturbed among the high branches of the oak and 

 hickory, they become soft and musical ; and his call of the female, a stranger 

 would readily mistake for the repeated creakings of an ungreased wheelbarrow. 

 All these he accompanies with various nods, jerks and other gesticulations, for 

 which the whole tribe of jays is so remarkable, that, with some other peculiarities, 

 thev might have very well justified the great Swedish naturalist in forming them 

 into a separate genus by themselves.'" 



Of the more modern writers on tlie life-history of the blue jay, the late 

 Major Bendire says : "Few of our native birds compare in beauty of plumage 

 and general bearing with the blue jay, and, while one cannot help admiring him 

 on account of amusing and interesting traits, still even his best friends cannot 

 say much in his favor, and, though I have never caught one actually in mischief, 

 so many close ol)servers have done so, that one cannot very well, even if so in- 

 clined, disprove the principal charge brought against this handsome freebooter." 



It is an unfortunate fact that if a bad name is attached to a person or a bird 

 it is hard work to live it down, even though the bearer has been condemned on 

 hearsay evidence. The story of guilt may have been started on the most trivial 

 evidence, but every time it is repeated it gains in strength and is soon magnified 

 into huge proportions ; and what might have been easily explained at the outset, 

 by a careful examination into the facts, casts a lifelong slur on the character of 

 an innocent victim. 



Even so careful and exact a writer as the late Major Bendire is compelled 

 to add from his strict sense of justice, that he had "never caught a blue jay in 

 mischief." The writer's experience with this bird is exactly parallel with that 

 of Major Bendire, and he is therefore loth to believe all the bad stories that have 

 been printed about the noisy, handsome jay. 



Probably the most accurate brief respecting the blue jay's feeding habits 

 that has ever been written is by Mr. F. E. L. Beal. After citing three cases of 

 field observers who saw blue jays in the act of sucking eggs or taking young 

 birds, Mr. Beal adds: "In view of such explicit testimony from observers whose 

 accuracy cannot be impeached, special pains have been taken to ascertain how far 

 the charges were sustained by a study of the bird's food. An examination was 

 made of 292 stomachs collected in every month of the year from 22 states, the 

 District of Columbia and Canada. The real food is composed of 24.3 per cent 

 of animal matter and 75.7 per cent of vegetable matter. The animal food is 

 chiefly made up of insects, with a few spiders, myriapods, snails and small verte- 

 brates, such as fish, salamanders, tree-frogs, mice and birds. Everything was care- 

 fully examined which might by any possibility indicate that birds or eggs had 

 been eaten, but remains of birds were found only in two, and the shells of small 

 birds' eggs in three of the 292 stomachs. One of these, taken on I'ebruary IC, 

 contained the bones, claws, and a little skin of a bird's foot. Another, taken on 

 June 24, contained remains of a young bird. The three stomachs with birds' eggs 



39 



