94: FLORIDA 



lower perch than I had thought, there the fellow 

 stood at the top of a shrub, directly before my 

 eyes, a Florida jay. It was nine years since I 

 had seen a bird of his kind, and the sight was 

 welcome accordingly. Perhaps he knew it. At 

 any rate, whether for my pleasure or his own, 

 he held his ground and kept up his harsh, 

 shrikely vociferations. 



The Florida jay (a crestless bird, not at all 

 the same as the Florida blue jay, which abounds 

 everywhere and is everywhere noisy, especially 

 in the villages) is strictly a bird of the peninsula, 

 being found nowhere else a remarkable in- 

 stance of extreme localization. I ran upon still 

 another individual before reaching the end of 

 my jaunt, on the outskirts of Lemon City, 

 and all three were in dooryards. Oak scrub 

 (where you may look out for rattlesnakes) and 

 human neighborhood, these, as I read the signs, 

 are the Florida jay's desiderata. 



In general, as compared with the hammock 

 woods, the pine lands are nearly birdless. An 

 occasional sparrow hawk (another strangely trust- 

 ful creature, very common in this country 1 ), an 



1 One was living in the greenhouse connected with the big 

 hotel. The gardener told me that it had come in of itself, and 

 persisted in staying. He had tried in vain to get rid of it. 

 Tossed out of doors, it would at once return and make itself 

 at home. 



