492 LAND BIRDS 
About the farms and henhouses he is even a greater 
pest, eating the eggs and occasionally killing the newly 
hatched chicks. Foraging in bands, these Jays destroy 
quantities of fruit of every variety and pull up the young 
sprouts of wheat. In short, there seems to be no limit 
to the Jay’s mischief, and nothing too bad to say of him. 
In addition to all this, every bird-student sooner or later 
comes to feel a personal grievance against him, for 
seldom or never does one of these pests fail to discover 
your presence in a wood and to give warning of it far 
and wide to everything that flies. As long as you stay, 
so long will he, perched on the tallest tree-top, sit 
screaming, “ Here she is! here! here!” in open defiance 
of your wish for quiet or concealment. Every bird in 
the forest knows and hides. Observation is impossible, 
and with unspoken maledictions on his little flat blue 
head you sadly trudge on to another wood. Fortunate 
indeed are youif he does not collect a band of his fellows 
and follow you. 
There is another side of this story. In spite of our- 
selves we are forced to admire his dashing courage and 
gay nonchalance, his devotion to his kind, and his care 
for his young. ‘There is something uncanny in the 
wisdom with which these Jays band together for defence 
or offence. Although so quarrelsome with other birds, 
they never molest each other, nor do they kill an injured 
one of their kind, as robins do. 
Their nests are placed in low bushes or thickets, or on 
the horizontal branch of an oak, seldom more than ten 
feet from the ground, and usually near water. This last 
2. 
eae eee 
