46 £be TOarbler 



and yet no two nests of this one group were nearer each other than several 

 hundred feet. 



The young Jays begin to manifest their noisy identity everywhere, 

 among the pines of the canyons and the shale hills, quite early in June. 

 Their incessant fire-alarm call resounds everywhere at all times of the day ; 

 from the hour when the first brood leaves the nest, in early-June, until old 

 birds and young, breeders and non-breeders, begin to scatter, in their forag- 

 ing, some time in September. It is asserted that the Jays begin to frequent 

 the grain-fields at this time, or earlier. This assertion, like so many others 

 elaborated in Wyoming, will bear investigation. This really dainty-colored 

 bird is yet, as above observed, a rather gross feeder ; and he is, withal, quite 

 too wary to brave the dangers of the shot-gun and the " twenty-two," with 

 all the concomitants of these, to leave the insect food he so greatly prefers ; 

 until the on-coming of cold and snow compel him to a granivorous diet. 

 And even then he seems to find the town, even where the sling-shot prevails, 

 a safer place than the ranches. 



A sketch of the life-traits and habits of this Jay would be incomplete 

 without some reference to certain questions bearing upon the pathology of 

 sociable birds. 



Dissection shows the Pinyon Jay to be frequently infested with parasi- 

 tic worms. These are found in the flesh, at times ; though usually in the 

 intestines. An occasional bird appears to be diseased in the digestive organs. 

 One such, a lone and miserable wretch, the writer would have put out of 

 misery ; but that gnus are tabued in town, even in Wyoming. Two other 

 abnormal creatures ai rested my attention ; as they struggled with their fel- 

 lows for a share in the feast of oats which had been provided for the nourish- 

 ing of the Jays and for my own entertainment ; in a pine-tree but two feet 

 from my study window. The one of these had the upper mandible at least 

 one-third shorter than the lower ; while the other was " shy " in just the 

 other way. 



The proper thing in oat-eating etiquette should here be explained : Save 

 when ravenously hungry, a Pinyon Jay never bolts an oat, hull-and-all. The 

 custom is to seize an oat from the trough ; and then fly with it to the edge 

 of the trough or to some convenient near-by twig. The oat is then deftly 

 transferred from the beak to the claws ; and held crosswise between the feet 

 against the twig. A few neat strokes of the bill follow ; and the grain is ex- 

 tracted quickly from the hull. The entire operation is done much more 

 quickly than the time consumed in the telling ; and with marvelous ease. 



It is a beautiful mark of the adaptitude of many animals to unusual 

 or changed conditions that my two Jays of the mal-formed beak were just as 

 deft and quite as swift as their more perfectly equipped fellows. The chief 

 differences lay in this : the Jay with the short lower mandible did not stoop 

 so far at his work ; while he of the stubby upper-mandible had to stoop much. 



