Clark's Crows and Oregon Jays on Mount Hood 



73 



hoppers enough for all tlie world, while here the feast was restricted 

 to the foot of one cliff on the mountain — quite a different matter. 

 When I spoke to Mrs. Langille about this difference in disposition, 

 she acquiesced as if it were an old stor}^ to her, unhesitatingly- 

 denominating the Ja}^s 'generous fellows,' and the Crows 'greedy' 

 ones. 



One Crow made a special exhibition of egoistic tendencies. He 

 was engaged in hurriedly carrying off future breakfasts for himself 

 when a party of brother Crows appeared. He had been working with 

 absorption, flying back and forth to the table with eager haste, being 

 gone less than half a minute at a time, but on the arrival of his 

 friends dropped his work and devoted himself to driving them from 

 the field. Not content with keeping them from the table, he flew at 

 them with a strange note of ominous warning when they sat quietly 

 in the tree-tops. It seemed as if he were nervous lest they discover 

 what he had been storing among the branches. When he had fairly 

 routed the enemy he apparently acted on his fear of discovery, for, 

 instead of placing his supplies near at hand as before, he fiew out 

 of sight with them. As before, he worked with nervous haste. As 

 I looked down on the tree-tops from above it was impossible to see 

 where he put all the food, but several times when he flew up in 

 sight he seemed to be sticking small bits between the needles of the 

 pines. As the bunches of needles are compact and stiff in this 

 white-barked pine (Finns allncaulis), this might be a safe temporary 

 cache, but the winter gales that make it necessary to hold down the 

 Inn with huge cables would pre- 

 sumably leave little biscuit be- 

 tween the needles of a pine. 



The question is, do these 

 birds — and others which hoard 

 — really use their stores ? The 

 testimony of all who are in the 

 field in winter is needed to clear 

 up the matter. The first point 

 to be determined is whether the 

 individual birds winter where 

 they store. The Nutcrackers, 

 Mr. Langille informed me, do 

 remain at the high altitudes 

 all the year. As he said, it is storm}' indeed when they cannot 

 be seen sailing across the caiions or perched on the topmost 

 branches of the trees, screaming and calling in their harsh way, 

 always restless and seeming to resent any intrusion of man, beast. 



OREGON JAYS 

 I'hotographed from nature by Florence A. Merriam 



