THE WAYS OF JAYS 



If a pair of Blue Jays, . whose home I chanced to find 

 near mine, could relate to us the peculiar adventures that 

 befell them one June day, there would be no excuse for my 

 assumption of the office of scribe. But Jays, in spite of their 

 powers of expression, use only the language of their kind,, 

 and if the tale is to be told, it must be by an interpreter. 



Birds possess so many of man's mental attributes that 

 the sympathetic student of their habits often, unconsciously 

 perhaps, endows them with the mind of man entire, when, 

 using the human parallel, the explanation of their every act 

 is merely a matter of ingenuity or imagination. The result 

 is often interesting, but quite as often misleading; good 

 fiction, but poor natural history. 



Now, the Blue Jay holds close kinship with the Raven, 

 Jackdaw, Crow, and Rook, birds which, if classification were 

 based on mental development alone, would, without dissent, 

 be accorded a perch on the topmost bough of the avian tree 

 of life. In attempting to assign reasons for a Jay's actions, 

 the ornithologist is beset by unusual temptations, which, if 

 it be the human side of bird life that appeals to him, he will 

 find difficulty in resisting. 



In the present instance, however, the facts in the case are 

 irrefutably recorded by the camera, and the reader may 

 accept or reject their explanation according to his belief or 

 disbelief in the intelligence of individual animals. Facts 

 like these emphasize the value of the camera as an aid to the 

 student of nature. How comparatively unconvincing is the 

 work of the artist, no matter how skilful his attempt to give 

 form to something he has never seen. It is also to be noted, 

 how attempts to photograph birds and beasts of necessity 

 increase our intimacy with them. This, it is true, is not 



