BLUE JAY. 69 



XIX. 



BLUE JAY. 



THE blue jay comes with a dash and a flourish. 

 As Thoreau says, he " blows the trumpet of win- 

 ter.'' Unlike the chickadee, whose prevailing 

 tints match the winter sky, and whose gentle day- 

 day-day chimes with the softly falling snows, the 

 blue jay would wake the world up. His " clario- 

 net " peals over the villages asleep in the snow- 

 drifts as if it would rouse even the smoke that 

 drowses over their white roofs. He brings the 

 vigor and color of winter. He would send the 

 shivering stay-at-homes jingling merrily over the 

 fields, and start the children coasting down the 

 hills. Wake-up, wake-up, come-out, come-out he 

 calls, and blows a blast to show what winter is 

 good for. 



And so he flashes about, and screams and scolds 

 till we crawl to the window to look at him. Ha ! 

 what a handsome bird ! He has found the break- 

 fast hung on the tree for him and clings to it 

 pecking away with the appetite of a Greenlander. 

 Not a hint of winter in his coloring ! Note his 

 purplish back as he bends over, the exquisite 

 cobalt blue, touched off with black and white on 

 his wings, and the black barring on the tightly 

 closed tail he is bracing himself by. How distin- 

 guished his dark necklace and handsome blue 



