96 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
grubs, beetles, and snails; May, cockchafers and 
grasshoppers ; June, eggs of birds, cockchafers, and 
beetles ; July, young birds, flies, and beetles; August, 
the same, acorns, grubs, and dragon-flies ; September, 
the same, and fruit; October, beetles, slugs, snails, 
and grain; November, the same; December, the 
same, and haws and hips.” 
The range of diet here given is tolerably extensive, 
but the bird really seems almost omnivorous, and 
very few eatable objects or substances come amiss to 
its voracious appetite. By gamekeepers it is greatly 
detested, owing to its fondness for both the eggs and 
the unfledged young of game birds, and a perpetual 
warfare is carried on against it, which bids fair before 
many years have passed to result in its almost total 
extermination so far as these islands are concerned. 
In some parts of the country, however, it still holds 
its own, and appears even to increase in numbers— 
possibly owing to the large number of immigrants 
which visited our shores two or three years ago. 
My friend Mr. R. J. W. Purdy informs me that the 
jay is especially fond of barley at the time when the 
grain, although still soft and milky, is beginning to 
ripen. For nuts of various kinds, too, it evinces a 
special liking, while acorns are devoured by it in 
such numbers as to have earned for the bird the 
specific title of glandarius, signifying a lover of 
acorns. Of all the various eatables in which it in- 
dulges, however, there is none which appears to 
exercise so irresistible a fascination over it as the egg 
of another bird, and a trap baited with so tempting a 
