V °\™ VI ] General Notes. Ill 



My only earlier record of an Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker in this 

 state was of an adult male bird also, seen in Pine Banks Park, Malden- 

 Melrose, on October 22, 1904, 1 and recorded there from time to time 

 through the season up to April 21, 1905, thereby completing a six months' 

 residence. 



On my next trip over the Belmont lands on November 2 I did not find 

 this Woodpecker. — -Horace W. Wright, Boston, Mass. 



The Song of the Blue Jay. — Possibly many who read the above title 

 will think that they glimpse in it a lurking sarcasm, as they recall the notes 

 which usually announce the presence of the " screaming jay," for compara- 

 tively few bird students or writers upon bird song seem to be aware of the 

 Blue Jay's best musical performance. 



Blue Jays are numerous in Florida and during my last two winters there 

 I met a number of bird students in different localities who spoke to me of 

 the Blue Jay song to which I refer, describing it as sweet, tender and quite 

 lovely; delivered, they asserted, with a retiring modesty not perceptible 

 in the Blue Jay's deportment on other occasions. 



One friend, who is a keen observer of birds and their music, told me that 

 when she spoke to him, some years ago, about this particular melody he 

 said he had never heard any such song from the Blue Jay, but at a more 

 recent period when meeting her again he referred to the song in question 

 and said, " I have heard it since talking with you." 



Though these reports occasionally came to me I did not hear the Blue 

 Jay sing until last July in Winter Park, Florida. While a friend and I 

 were seated near a window, dining, we heard a song unlike that of any of 

 the common birds with which we were familiar ; it was not loud nor ringing, 

 nor at all like whistling, but the notes were formed into a sweet and some- 

 what complex bird melody. All paused to listen and it required from us 

 only a lifting of the eyes to discover the singer, a Blue Jay, perching out- 

 side of the window on the lowest branch of a pine tree. 



A search through books on birds and their notes yielded interesting 

 quotations from the following authors: — in his 'Fieldbook of Wild Birds 

 and their Music,' Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews says of the Blue Jay, " He 

 attempts nothing that we can call a song." In the ' Color Key to North 

 American Birds ' by Dr. Frank M. Chapman and Chester A. Reed, turning 

 to the description of the Blue Jay we read, " Notes: varied; commonly a 

 loud harsh jay, jay; often whistling calls and imitations of the notes of 

 other birds, particularly of common hawks." There is a similar estimate 

 of the Blue Jay's musical powers in Chester A. Reed's " Bird Guide." 



From Mabel Osgood Wright we have: — "A whistling bell-note in the 

 breeding season; the usual cry a screaming jay, jay, jay." Nor do Brad- 

 ford Torrey, Florence Merriam Bailey, Simeon Pease Cheney, and many 

 others allude to a song from the Blue Jay. 



> Auk, vol. XXII, Jan. 1905, p. 80. 



