THE BLUE JAY. 



No. 3. 



BLUE JAY. 



A. O. U. No. 477. Cyanocitta cristata (Linn.). 



Description. Above, grayish-blue with a purple cast; below, smoky or 

 sordid gray; a black collar continues up the sides of the neck and underlies the 

 conspicuous blue-gray crest; frontlet and lores black; throat and sides of head 

 gray with a delicate purplish suffusion ; wings and tail brighter blue, finely banded 

 with black ; greater coverts and secondaries of wing, and tail feathers, except mid- 

 dle pair, broadly tipped with white; bill and feet black. Length 11.00-12.50 

 (279.4-317.5) ; wing 5.00-6.00 (I27.-I52.4) ; tail 5.00-6.00 (I27.-I52.4) ; bill i.oo- 

 1.25 (25.4-31.8) ; tarsus i.oo-i.io (25.4-27.9). A typical male in the O. S. U. 

 collection measures: wing 5.25 (133.3); tail 5.40 (137.2); bill 1.03 (26.2); 

 tarsus 1.09 (27.7). The female averages smaller than the male and is not so 

 brightly colored. 



Recognition Marks. Jay size ; bright blue coloring. This is one of four 

 or five species which everybody knows. 



Nest, a compact structure of sticks and roots, lined, almost invariably, with 

 fine brown rootlets, and placed in a crotch or branch of a tree, usually near the 

 trunk, ten to thirty feet up. Eggs, 3-6, bluish-green, olive-green, ashy-brown, 

 or bistre, dotted and blotched with olive and cinnamon-brown. Av. size, i.io x 

 .85 (27.9 x 21.6). 



General Range. Eastern North America to the Plains, and from the Fur 

 Countries south to Florida and Eastern Texas. 



Range in Ohio. Of universal distribution. Resident; common in middle 

 and northern portions, but less frequent southerly. 



"BEAUTY and the Beast" find joint representation in this most familial- 

 inhabitant of village and woodland. Beautiful he undoubtedly is in his panoply 

 of blue and white, and we are moved to an admiration which is never quite dis- 

 pelled ; but the heart of him is deceitful and cruel beyond belief. The Blue Jay 

 is the outlaw among birds, no romantic Musolino, beloved by the masses and 

 hated by the few, but a plain bad bird, whose only virtues are such as to merit 

 slight appreciation in the bird world proper. Cunning, mischievous, thieving, 

 cruel, noisy, boastful, quarrelsome, treacherous, wanton one is tempted to 

 empty the vials of opprobrious epithets upon his devoted head but the vision 

 of his saucy beauty and the memory of his ringing delary, delary, stays, as it 

 always will, the hand of justice. 



The trouble with Blue Jay is that we all fall in love with him in the winter 

 when he is being good, but lose sight of him in the spring and summer when 

 he is practicing his villainies. In the winter time the flashing blue of the lay's 

 plumage, most resplendent then, is a welcome sight among the barren hedge- 

 rows or about the chilly outbuildings, which he explores for stray bits of honest 

 food ; or a roistering company of them sweep through the grove and set it ring- 



