102 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



can stir without being spotted and proclaimed. 

 Jays also take a somewhat uncalled-for delight in 

 mobbing a barn-owl should it get abroad in the 

 day-time. 



The cunning of jays is shown particularly in their 

 breeding-time. You may hunt high and low, till 

 your neck aches as if it were going to break, for 

 a jay's nest which you know must be in a certain 

 wood, and not find it ; yet you may pass within a 

 yard or so of it. You may see the old jays about 

 day after day, and they may utter a derisive squawk 

 every time, but never a sound will they make near 

 their nest. Nor do young jays ever squawk, 

 unless actually molested, till they are out of the 

 nest and can fly. Then they make any amount 

 of noise. I f jays made a practice of eating pheasants' 

 eggs, it would be almost impossible to have any 

 wild-bred pheasants, unless there were very few 

 jays indeed or very many hen pheasants. In other 

 words, when jays do take it into their heads to suck 

 pheasants' eggs, they keep it up at a marvellous 

 rate. In one season, in one wood, I lost over 

 two hundred pheasants' eggs, their shells (each 

 with a neat hole through which the contents had 

 been sampled) remaining in the nests. I came to 

 the conclusion that it was the work of jays, and 

 rightly ; for so soon as I had trapped a pair of jays 

 to pheasants' eggs my losses entirely ceased, at 

 which I was not sorry. Rabbits' eyes or sheep's 



