42 Gbe TOarbler 



A few moments later a little of added Pinyon-Jay-knowledge comes to 

 the mortal. Stalking with impudent yet ever-watchful familiarity about 

 the back door of some citizen, but a few feet from the observer, the Jays are 

 foraging. To them, nothing swallowable comes amiss. Here and there, 

 with restless haste, the birds quarrelsomely gather what they can find where- 

 soever they may find it. Push and grab prevails ; and " the devil take 

 the hindermost." And when that hindermost suddenly awakens to 

 the consciousness that most of the flock have heeded the call to onward 

 march from some tacitly recognized leader, (a cry which no mortal may dis- 

 tinguish from the ordinary call-note whereby, apparently, the members of a 

 flock are kept together), he rouses himself from his gutter-searching with a 

 strident " tur-a-rurt-turV ; and away he goes, with throat distended by gar- 

 bage, — away after his departing fellows among the tops of the bull-pines. 

 From all this one may readily infer ; that the Pinyon Jay is impulsive and 

 erratic. In these two traits he is doubly a Jay. 



As to the habits of the Pinyon Jay during winter in the neighborhood 

 of ranches the writer cannot say. He has, indeed, seen them under such cir- 

 cumstances feeding, night and morning, with their usual quarrelsome soci- 

 ability, atop the stacks of uuthreshed grain. It is safe to conclude, even 

 from this narrow observation ; that feeding habits in town and in field quite 

 naturally correspond. 



If such a thing be possible the noisiness of the Pinyon increases with 

 the inflowing of the tide of Spring-time ardor. The swift spiral wheelings 

 of the flocks, in air, increase ; the masses of birds, from fifty to a hundred in 

 number, begin to split up into love-making trios ; and the season of repro- 

 duction begins emphatically to assert itself, thus ; even in birds that " never 

 rear any young." 



One is inclined to believe, from the notes taken during three breeding 

 seasons ; that the times of beginning vary considerably from year to year 

 with reference to egg-laying ; and that this variance has apparently little to 

 do with the weather conditions. To illustrate : in 1905 the search for fresh- 

 laid eggs began in mid-April ; on the basis of the previous year's study. Yet 

 the first nest found contained eggs in which the embryos were nearly feath- 

 ered ; while a group of four nests found, quite without local precedent, with- 

 in a hundred yards, mutually, horn one another, in twenty-foot young pines 

 atop the canyon-side, were all furnished with young. These from a week 

 to ten days old ; (with slight differences in age within the same nest.) In 

 the last week of March, 1906, the search for nests began. An all-day trav- 

 ersing of the familiar canyon-sides whereon were found all previous nests, 

 revealed but two completed nests. These were far apart ; and contained no 

 eggs. They contained, on the sixth of April, sets of five unincubated eggs. 

 This number, five, is regnant in Wyoming. 



The sage observation of a seemingly intelligent ranchman to the effect 



