8 



Hints to Audubon Workers. 



together, as if by a family compact. Indeed, 

 this is a pretty domestic feature of our East- 

 ern snowbird. Some twenty-five feet from 

 our study windows is a beautiful copse of 

 Thuja occidcntalis, or arbor vitce * * * the 

 trees are high and the foliage dense, * * * 

 Hither come our little birds when the day's 

 foraging is done — this is their nightly 'cov- 

 ert from storm and rain'; while strange to 

 tell, their snow dugout is made to serve as 

 a cosy asylum from the cutting wind by 

 day." {^American Naturalist, Vol. XV., No. 

 7, P- 519-520.) 



He then goes on to say: "Our Eastern 

 snowbird does not hold together long in 

 large flocks, but does like to keep together 

 in small bevies, or family groups. * * * 

 Is a good deed contagious? These tiny 

 things have caught the knack of charity 

 among themselves ! There is a poor little 

 snowbird on a rail; something ails it, for a 

 stalwart junco is carrying food and feeding 

 it with nursely tenderness. To and fro goes 

 the noble little fellow, until the hunger of 

 its nursling is appeased. The bird is in 

 some way lame of wing; and its benefactor 

 knows all about it * * a double question 

 is under consideration, namely, hunger and 

 safety, demanding foresight and strategy. 

 If it would, the crippled bird could go to 

 the window sill and help itself; for it has 

 managed to keep up with the family flock, 

 but with painful effort. These two words 

 lighten up the whole case. Even the stal- 

 warts come to the place of feeding not 

 without circumspection and some distrust 

 * * * hence this thoughtful commiseration 

 — that crippled bird must be allowed a 

 position 'surveying vantage.' " {^American 

 Naturalist, Vol. XV., No. 7, p. 519-521, 

 July, 1881. 



15LUEJAV. 



The bluejay always comes with a dash 

 and a flourish. As Thoreau says, he "blows 

 the trumpet of winter." Unlike the chick- 

 adee, whose prevailing tints match the win- 



ter sky, and whose gentle day-day-day 

 chimes with the softly falling snows, the 

 bluejay would wake the world up. His 

 "clarionet" sounds 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's good for. And so he flashes about, 

 and screams and scolds till we crawl to the 

 window to look at him. Ha! what a hand- 

 some fellow! He has found the breakfast 

 hung on the tree for him and clings to it, 

 pecking away with the appetite of a Green- 

 lander. Not a hint of winter in his coloring! 

 See his purplish back, and the exquisite 

 cobalt blue, touched off with black and 

 white on his wings and tail. How disting- 

 uished he looks with his dark necklace and 

 handsome blue crest ! There ! he is off 

 again, and before we think where he is go- 

 ing we hear the echo of his rousing phe- 

 phay, phe-phay from the depths of the 

 woods. 



Speaking of the winter birds of Massachu- 

 setts, Mr. Allen wrote in 1867: "Among 

 our more familiar resident birds, there are 

 but few species that seem as numerous in 

 winter as at other seasons; of these the 

 bluejay [Cyanura cristata, Swains.) is a 

 prominent example. Though unusually so- 

 cial in his disposition, he is yet hardly gre- 

 garious. The noisy screams of small scat- 

 tered parties reach us from the swamps and 

 thickets almost daily, and in the severer 

 weather, individuals make frequent excur- 

 sions to the orchard and farmer's cribs of 

 corn, the few grains they pilfer being amply 

 paid for in the destruction of thousands of 

 the eggs of the noxious tent-caterpillar.* 

 In 1 88 1, Mr. Charles Aldrich wrote from 

 * American Naturalist, Vol. I., No. i, p. 45, March. 

 1867. 



