10 8 THE BIRDS OF THE WOODS 



so that the one in use can only be known by the presence of the young birds. 

 The magpie is a handsome bird with a long tail and short rounded wings; 

 its breast and both shoulders being pure white, and the rest black, its 

 plumage glistening with iridescent hues. It is found all over Europe, from 

 Spain to the Urals and the Caspian, and from the North Cape to Greece. 

 In many districts it is rare, in others it is abundant, while in a few it has 

 been exterminated. 



The gaudily plumaged jay (Garrulus glandarius) is a bird of 

 the woodland, but never of the pine-forest, and only of the woodlands 

 where oak-trees grow. It is the bird of the oak, or rather of the acorn, as indicated 

 by its specific name ; and, notwithstanding its varied bill of fare, the acorn is its 

 favourite food. The jay is a restless, impudent bird, having many enemies and 

 few friends, in spite of its handsome plumage. It is seldom seen on the ground, as 

 it can only move about there with difficulty, and instead of walking like a crow, 

 hops like a sparrow ; it has an irregular, laboured flight, with many sudden 

 undulations and frequent rests, even when another jay is in pursuit. The jay is 

 one of the worst enemies with which smaller birds have to contend, owing to its 

 robbing their nests and eating their eggs and young. It will also feed on insects 

 and worms and nuts and fruits of most kinds ; it is particularly destructive to peas, 

 and will occasionally take a fancy to unripe grain when cornfields are skirted by 

 woods. In self-assurance it is never wanting, and it will even stand up to the 

 sparrow-hawk, whose astonishment at , such audacity is quickly followed by the 

 jay's summary execution. 



The jay's call is a rahrahk, rake, rake, half screech, half croak, but the bird 

 seems to have the gift of imitating most sounds, natural and mechanical, except the 

 human voice. The nest is a rather large cup of twigs and roots in a tall bush, or 

 on the lower branches of a tree, and the eggs, which may be as many as seven in 

 number, are of various shades of green, grey, and brown, generally with a band of 

 olive speckles at one end. Though it migrates in considerable flocks, the jay is 

 confined to Europe, where it ranges from Britain and France to the valley of the 

 Volga, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle in Sweden, and to latitude 

 63° in Russia. Its colour is chiefly grey and vinaceous brown, the tail being 

 blackish barred with blue, and the blue, white, and black chequers on the wing- 

 coverts are characteristic 



The nutcrackers are distinguished from the jays by a more 

 compact shape and a thinner bill ; the European representative of the 

 genus being Nucifraga caryocatactes, whose favourite haunts are woods of fir 

 and larch in the sparsely populated parts of Asia, although it is also found here and 

 there in the mountainous districts of Europe. When on migration, the nutcracker 

 resorts to forests of deciduous trees, which it searches for acorns, beech-mast, and 

 hazel-nuts. Hazel-nuts and, more especially, pine-seeds are its favourite food, 

 and wherever pine-trees abound, as is generally the case in northern Asia, these 

 birds have thinner and more slender beaks than in localities where their food has 

 a harder husk, and therefore requires more force to crack. From this character 



