THE BIRD IN BLUE 15 



whereabouts of its eggs or young. Most of the nests 

 I have seen have been discovered by accident. For 

 example, when going along a road I have had occasion 

 to look round suddenly at some bird flying overhead 

 and caught sight of a roller entering a hole in a tree. 



Some days ago I was out with a friend, when we saw 

 a hoopoe, with food in its mouth, disappear into a hole 

 in the wall of a Hindu temple. The aperture was about 

 seven feet from the ground, so, in order to look into it, 

 I mounted my friend's back. While I was investigating 

 the hoopoe's hole, a blue jay flew out of another hole in 

 the wall within a yard of my face ! 



Like Moses of old, I turned aside to investigate this 

 new wonder, and found that the hole went two and a 

 half feet into the wall, and that its aperture was a 

 square six inches in both length and breadth. The 

 floor of this little alcove was covered with earth and 

 tiny bits of dirty straw, which may or may not have 

 been put there by the blue jay. On this lay a clutch of 

 four glossy white eggs, nearly as large as those laid by 

 the degenerate Indian murghi. Fortunately for those 

 blue jays I am not an egg collector. As it was, I did 

 remove one of them for a lady who was anxious to have 

 it, but this was not missed. Birds cannot count. 



