112 General Notes. [£J 



However, in the ' History of North American Birds,' (Vol. II) by Baird, 

 Brewer and Ridgway, we read: " The Blue Jay is conspicuous as a musi- 

 cian. He exhibits a variety in his notes and occasionally a beauty and a 

 harmony in his song for which few give him credit." Although I am quite 

 confident that Mr. John Burroughs does not mention this Blue Jay song in 

 his earlier books, in ' The Ways of Nature ' he quotes from Mr. Leander 

 Keyser " the sweet gurgling roulade of the wild jays " ; and Wilson 

 alludes to the Blue Jay's occasional warbling with all the softness of tone 

 of a bluebird. Mr. Nehrling also speaks of the Blue Jay melody in his 

 ' Birds of Song and Beauty,' and Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller says in writing 

 about a pet Blue Jay, " and occasionally uttering a sweet though not loud 

 song." A bird student in central Georgia claims to have heard this Blue 

 Jay music very often, quite early in the morning. 



Do the Blue Jay's crude efforts at mimicry indicate a craving for more 

 power in the realm of sound and melody, and is Nature evolving an 

 original song for him through desire, or are we becoming aware that a bird 

 singer has been modestly hiding his talent throughout the centuries behind 

 a camouflage of swagger airs and teasing screams, or at best poorly executed 

 mocking notes and a few whistles? — Isabel Goodhue, Washington, D. C. 



The Aesthetic Sense in Birds as illustrated by the Crow. — The 

 Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos brack yrhynchos) is not generally recognized 

 as a songster, but it has one note which has always seemed to me to serve 

 for a love-song since it is heard chiefly in the spring and is delivered in a 

 different fashion from the various caws in the bird's repertoire. This is 

 the hoarse rattle which is familiar to all of us. It is uttered with the" bill 

 pointed vertically downward and opened rather wide. It is accompanied 

 by no marked movement of the head and whole body as when the caws 

 are delivered, but the note seems to issue of itself, as it were, being very 

 suggestive of eructation. There is, however, an accompanying display of 

 wings opened slightly at the bend and shoulder feathers ruffled such as is 

 common in the courtship of birds. This love-song doubtless serves its 

 purpose in the reproductive cycle, and it is conceivable that it may give 

 pleasure to the singer's mate and to the singer himself, but on the other 

 hand it would be hard to prove that it was anything more than a mere 

 reflex, the mechanical performance of an automaton devoid of even the 

 rudiments of aesthetic sense. 



The Crow has another vocal accomplishment, however, of a radically 

 different character and of a much higher order, one which, it seems to me, 

 can be accounted for only by postulating a well-developed aesthetic sense. 

 There is no melody in his vocal utterances and, of course, no harmony, 

 but in time rhythm, he is a master. The only other bird that occurs to 

 me as conspicuous for rhythm with or without melody is the Barred Owl, 

 and his four-footed line of blank verse with the curious caesural pause in 

 the middle is so unvarying that it may well be purely mechanical, whereas 

 the Crow's is remarkable for its variety. 



