296 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
yellow, and the underparts white streaked with black. 
These birds were little known. They only made flying 
visits, and gave merely a call-note, keeping their beauti- 
ful song, during which they soar in the air like the Sky- 
lark, for their nesting-haunts in the far North. 
Gray Lady’s ingenuity was taxed to its utmost, however, 
when one Saturday morning little Clary came to the play- 
room, her face aglow, and said that she had seen “a brown 
Blue Jay with a yellow tail and red wings; not just one, 
but a whole family.” 
For a moment Gray Lady was quite at a loss how to 
proceed; yellow tail and red wings were surely startling; 
then she saw that there must be some point about the bird 
that reminded the child of a Jay other than its colour. 
“How did this bird look like a Jay, Clary?” she 
asked. 
“Tn the head,” came the prompt reply; ‘it had feathers 
on top that moved up and down, the way a Jay’s does, and 
it was dark in the nose.” 
On thinking over the winter birds that had a crest of 
feathers that could be raised or lowered, she realized that 
the Cedar-bird had such a one, also a black beak, and 
a black eye-stripe that made it look “dark in the nose,” 
but yellow tail and red wings it certainly did not have, 
merely a narrow yellow band on the tail and small, 
waxen, coral red tips to some of the wing-quills. How- 
ever, taking half a dozen coloured pictures from one of the 
portfolios that she kept at hand to settle disputed points, 
she spread them in front of the little girl, who, without 
a moment’s hesitation, picked out the Cedar-bird, or Cedar 
_ Waxwing, as it is properly called from its coral wings-tips. 
