farther. As to the exactness of the observations herein involved there can 

 be no cavil : the one of these birds came to my granary at least once ; and 

 the other twice ; while in each case the bird was carefully observed at a dis- 

 tance of not over five feet. This oat-eating operation has been watched by the 

 writer frequently; and with ever-increasing marvel at the dexterity of the birds- 



In the genuine corvine style, these Jays roost at night in the usual di- 

 urnal flocks ; these divisions being, however, possibly consolidated at times. 

 Apparently some birds resort night after night to the same identical twig 

 for their roosting ; the droppings observable beneath the trees being some- 

 times incredibly great for a single night's accumulation. By noting these 

 spots on the bare shale beneath young and dense-leaved pines one may form 

 an intelligent idea as to the extent of a roosting place. 



This habit of keeping compactly together, even at night, on the part of 

 Pinyon Jays, became amusingly yet startlingly illustrated for the writer, but 

 a few days since : An entire day had been laboriously and fruitlessly spent 

 in searching the canyon sides for nests. A few pairs of evidently mated and 

 rather solicitous birds had been found here and there amid the old, familiar 

 haunts. Two or three flocks of twenty or more unmated birds, each, had 

 been surprised while feeding in a " bedding ground " of range cattle ; (this 

 particular natural corral consisting of a bunch of bull-pines clustering to- 

 gether, curiously, among glacial boulders on the open prairie, park-like 

 reaches on a " divide " between the canyons). But signs of nesting had 

 been unexplainably few ; and the tired naturalist was plodding doggedly 

 homeward, just at night-fall, among the freshet-piled masses of boulders 

 along a canyon bottom. Here and there a solitary young pine stood among 

 the sparse hemlocks and cedars along the canyon walls. No migrant birds 

 had yet begun to arrive ; and the brilliant White-winged Juncos, Long-tailed 

 Chickadees and Solitaires were silent. Then, suddenly, out of the utter 

 stillness, as I passed, there burst out a deafening chorus of " rurt-a-turt " 

 cries ; and twenty or thirty bohemian Jays tumbled, scrambled and darted 

 from their snug resting places in a dense pine out into the nascent night ; 

 and speedily disappeared into the silence and the gloom of the sempiternally 

 gloomy canyon-walls. 



