THE MAGPIE 59 
and at intervals introduces the bleating of a lamb, mewing of a 
cat, the note of a Kite or Buzzard, hooting of an Owl, or even neigh- 
ing of a horse. These imitations are so exact, even in a natural 
wild state, that we have frequently been deceived.’ The Jay 
generally builds its nest in a wood, either in the top of a low tree, 
or against the trunk of a lofty one, employing as material small 
sticks, roots, and dry grass, and lays five eggs. There seems to 
be a difference of opinion as to the sociability of the family party 
after the young are fledged, some writers stating that they separate 
by mutual consent, and that each shifts for itself ; others, that the 
young brood remains with the old birds all the winter. For my own 
part, I scarcely recollect ever having seen a solitary Jay, or to have 
heard a note which was not immediately responded to by another 
bird of the same species, the inference from which is that, though 
not gregarious, they are at least social. 
When domesticated, the Jay displays considerable intelligence ; 
it is capable of attachment, and learns to distinguish the hand and 
voice of its benefactor. 
THE MAGPIE 
PICA RUSTICA 
Head, throat, neck, and back velvet-black; scapulars and under plumage 
white ; tail much graduated and, as well as the wings, black, with lus- 
trous blue and bronze reflections; beak, iris, and feet black, Length 
eighteen inches; breadth twenty-three inches. Eggs pale dirty green, 
spotted all over with ash-grey and olive-brown. 
THE Magpie, like the Crow, labours under the disadvantage of an 
ill name, and in consequence incurs no small amount of persecution. 
Owing to the disproportionate length of its tail and shortness of 
its wings its flight is somewhat heavy, so that if it were not cunning 
and wary to a remarkable degree, it would probably well-nigh dis- 
appear from the catalogue of British Birds. Yet though it is 
spared by none except avowed preservers of all birds (like Water- 
ton, who protects it ‘on account of its having nobody to stand 
up for it’), it continues to be a bird of general occurrence, and 
there seems indeed to be but little diminution of its numbers. Its 
nest is usually constructed among the upper branches of a lofty 
tree, either in a hedge-row or deep in a wood; or if it has fixed its 
abode in an unwooded district, it selects the thickest thorn-bush 
in the neighbourhood and there erects its castle. This is com- 
posed of an outwork of thorns and briers supporting a mass of 
twigs and mud, which is succeeded by a layer of fibrous roots. 
The whole is not only fenced round but arched over with thorny 
sticks, an aperture being left, on one side only, large enough to 
admit the bird. In this stronghold are deposited generally six 
