130 BLUE JAY. 
Like the Crow, he is with us throughout the year. Dur- 
ing the summer he is not very common, and is remark- 
ably quiet, but in September and Octo- 
ber migrants arrive from the North, and 
the birds are then abundant in bands. 
These bands roam about the country like a lot of school- 
boys out chestnutting, pausing wherever they find acorns 
and chestnuts abundant, or leaving their feast to worry 
some poor Owl whose hiding place they have discovered. 
The Blue Jay’s best friend could not conscientiously 
call him a songster, but as a conversationalist he rivals 
the Crow. I have yet to discover a limit to his vocab- 
ulary, and, although on principle one may ascribe al- 
most any strange call to the Blue Jay, it is well to with- 
hold judgment until his loud, harsh jay/ jay/ betrays — 
the caller’s identity, Not content with a language of 
his own, he borrows from other birds, mimicking their 
calls so closely that the birds themselves are deceived. 
The Red-shouldered, Red-tail, and Sparrow Hawks are 
the species whose notes he imitates most often. 
The Blue Jay nests in the latter part of May, build- 
ing a compact nest of rootlets in a tree ten to twenty 
feet from the ground. The eggs are pale olive-green 
or brownish ashy, rather thickly marked with varying 
shades of cinnamon-brown. 
Blue Jay, 
Cyanocitta cristata. 
ORIOLES, BLACKBIRDS, ETC. (FAMILY ICTERIDA,) 
The popular naines of many of our birds were given 
them by the early cvlonists because of their fancied re- 
semblance to some Old World species. The fact that 
some of these names are incorrect and misleading has 
been pointed out scores of times, but they are now as 
firmly fixed as the signs of the zodiac. 
