CANADA JAY. 190 



tent to eat meat out of the dishes; watches the hunters while 

 baiting their traps for martens, and devours the bait as soon as 

 their backs are turned; that they breed early in spring, building 

 their nests on pine trees, forming them of sticks and grass, and 

 lay blue eggs; that they have two, rarely three young at a time, 

 which are at first quite black, and continue so for some time; 

 that they fly in pairs; lay up hoards of berries in hollow trees; 

 are seldom seen in January, unless near houses; are a kind of 

 Mock-bird; and when caught pine away, though their appetite 

 never fails them ; notwithstanding all which ingenuity and good 

 qualities, they are, as we are informed, detested by the natives.* 

 The only individuals of this species that I ever met with in 

 the United States were on the shores of the Mohawk, a short 

 way above the Little Falls. It was about the last of November, 

 and the ground deeply covered with snow. There were three 

 or four in company, or within a small distance of each other, 

 flitting leisurely along the road side, keeping up a kind of low 

 chattering with one another, and seemed nowise apprehensive 

 at my approach. I soon secured the whole; from the best of 

 which the drawing in the plate was carefully made. On dissec- 

 tion I found their stomachs occupied by a few spiders and the 

 aureliae of some insects. I could perceive no difference between 

 the plumage of the male and female. 



The Canada Jay is eleven inches long, and fifteen in extent; 

 back, wings, and tail, a dull leaden gray, the latter long, cunei- 

 form, and tipt with dirty white; interior vanes of the wings 

 brown, and also partly tipt with white; plumage of the head 

 loose and prominent; the forehead and feathers covering the 

 nostril, as well as the whole lower parts, a dirty brownish white, 

 which also passes round the bottom of the neck like a collar; 

 part of the crown and hind-head black; bill and legs also black; 

 eye dark hazel. The whole plumage on the back is long, loose, 

 unwebbed, and in great abundance, as if to protect it from the 

 rigours of the regions it inhabits. 



* HEARNE'S Journey, p. 405. 



