BLUE OR METALLIC BLUE 487 
And yet a Blue Jay can be gentle, and few birds are 
so devoted to mates or young. Two robins may quarrel, 
two orioles often do, but Blue Jays never. If a young 
Jay is taken from one nest and placed in another, he re- 
ceives the same treatment from his foster parents that 
their own young do; but these same Blue Jays will 
bring the nestlings of other birds for him to eat. 
Their ordinary call-note is very discordant, but I have 
heard them sing their love songs at four A. M., when 
no one was supposed to hear 
but the mother bird on the 
nest in the tall pine tree. 
Those critics who write learn- 
edly of bird songs, putting 
them into notes on a scale, 
may not speak of this clear, 
low conversational 
warbling as “ music,” ON be: 
but it is the outpour- (“#4 | git 
. : ; ae 478. STELLER JAY. 
me ofa st eat JOY, bless- At ** Nowhere are they 
. . . uw v 
ing alike the singer and welcome.” 
the one who hears. 
In the vicinity of Monterey, nest-building usually be- 
gins early in April, and for ten days the male brings 
twigs, rootlets, moss, and grass, with mud enough to 
cement them well together. These the female weaves 
into a cup-shaped affair quite unlike the flat platform of 
twigs made by our Eastern jays. It is oftenest lined 
with pine needles or rootlets, but occasionally short hair 
from cattle or deer is found in it. Incubation lasts six- 
