154 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
ality bubble like brooks in spring and gush 
like the thrush’s song in nesting time. 
Bird-hunting and bird-loving folk get the 
very best out of life in the way of sensuous 
pleasures not in the least voluptuous or over- 
stimulating. Just now, looking back over my 
notes, observations and recollections of out- 
door life, my long association with most of our 
minor song-birds appears something well worth 
having experienced. Much of what I remem- 
ber is knowledge of a kind scarcely communi- 
cable by any literary or artistic means, or by 
any method of natural expression. Once I 
heard a blue-jay sing as sweetly as the mock- 
ing-bird when trilling in a tender minor key. 
I could hardly believe my own sight and hear- 
ing as the beautiful, tricksy creature sat before 
me with drooping crest and half-raised wings, 
swaying his body lightly up and down and 
uttering a low, almost bewildering flute medley, 
full of the cadences of dreams. 
Still the blue-jay is not reckoned among the 
singing birds by those who are not close ob- 
servers. His common notes, though occasion- 
ally musical and sweet, are, as a rule, harsh 
and ill-tempered; a very imaginative person 
might conclude that the dolefully tender song 
I heard was the result of a fit of remorse, on 
the blue-jay’s part, for myriads of sins com- 
mitted against the nests, the eggs, and the 
young of other and weaker birds. How often 
I have witnessed acts of the most brutal cruelty 
done by the jay in apparently the quietest 
mood imaginable ! 
I recall an instance now: A sparrow had a 
nest with young in a clump of lilac-bushes on 
a lawn in front of a room I was occupying. 
