ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BIRD. 943 
that he migrated; and the winter jays in my yard 
may be from farther North. 
I like the jay in the winter. He gets upon the 
elm limbs and vigorously hammers an acorn, or 
takes a wild crab to the fence top and splits it for its 
seeds. Away from the callow nestling and the newly 
laid egg of other birds he picks up an honest living, 
and is fairly respectable—so much does decency de- 
pend upon environment. He is rarely “loud” in 
winter, unless he finds a luckless screech owl, and he 
wears his good clothes all the year round. I saw him 
engaged in the walnut tree one day in late summer in 
a manner that made me fear that his bath had not 
been sufficiently effectual. He would pluck off a leaf, 
ft his wing and rub it into his plumage. I saw him 
do it repeatedly ; and since walnut leaves have a pun- 
gent odor and are disagreeable to insects, I feared that 
he had some guests that he was trying to get rid of. 
If this theory should be correct, here was a case of a 
bird using perfumes, with at least good intentions. 
Scops, the screech owl—much to the discomfort of 
the jays—spent a summer with us once, and in his 
shuddering way, gave us several evening serenades 
from the trellis. I suspect that he was a bachelor. 
When winter came he hunted a home in the shaft 
ventilating the unused cellar under the woodhouse. 
It was smooth inside and he fell to the basement be- 
low, where he was found, evidently some weeks later, 
in such a state of fasting that his sins must have 
come up heavily before him. He became the house- 
hold pet for a while, but always remained meditative, 

