82 



THE CONDOR 



Vol. iX 



Their favorite haunt is a gulch on an open hillside, which is heavily covered 

 with scrub-oak, service-berry and pinyon, and here they are found in numbers, 

 flitting thru the underbrush and keeping out of sight as much as possible, but 

 continually uttering the coarse, grating cry characteristic of so many of this family. 



When undisturbed they will occasionally mount a high fence post or the top- 

 most branches of a small pinyon tree in plain sight of the surrounding ground, but 

 when disturbed they quickly disappear and trust largely to the cover of the under- 

 brush for protection. 



As the breeding season approaches they are much quieter and very retiring in 

 their habits, and when incubation begins only a careful search will satisfy the ob- 



NEST AND EGGS OF THE WOODHOUSE JAY; FROM PHOTO TAKEN IN 

 MESA COUNTY, COLORADO, JUNE i6, 1903 



server that there is a Woodhouse jay anywhere in the country, except for an oc- 

 casional male bird who flies aimlessly about, in a manner thoroh^ exasperating to 

 the observer who wonders where the nest is. 



In the location and concealment of the nests they are evidently adepts, as in 

 five years' observations I found but two nests, one of which was unoccupied; and 

 even after the leaves have dropped in the fall they are rarelj^ seen, a fact which can 

 only be accounted for by the birds' rare art of concealment, for the nests are far too 

 strongly built to weather away during the period between their occupancy and the 

 falling leaves, and the birds are so abundant in all suitable localities that nests 

 must be more or less common. 



