2 THE OSPREY. 



the wild birds and the wild flowers were in their height of abundance and 

 grandeur, but have gradually fallen back at the encroachments of civilization. 

 The deer have long since become a thing of the past, but quail (California 

 Partridge) still manage to hold their own on protected tracts, and an occasional 

 cotton-tail rabbit manages to find a secluded copse of wild blackberry briars 

 where he is safe from roving dogs, and hare or jackrabbit now and then ven- 

 tures down from the hills. At the present day many species of our flora are but 

 remembrances and only a comparatively small percentage of our avifauna rep- 

 resents the once abundant clans that furnished life and song to our woodlands. 

 In fact, some varieties seldom visit these parts nowadays, but the California 

 Jay is here in goodly numbers; too cheeky to be crowded out. He is now 

 enabled to procure food from man's agency as well as nature's, a greater 

 variety of more tempting moi'sels as he evidently sagaciously thinks, often 

 building his nest in some vacant lot or safer yet, in some secluded garden where 

 as jet an oak or two have been spared from the woodman's axe, among our 

 population of over 20,000 souls. 



In only a few parts of town remain small tracts of oaks and underbrush 

 in something of the original state, and rambling through them early in March 

 we will find the Jays mated, rather unobtrusive and tolerably silent for such 

 noisy birds, now and then uttering a low croak which is either a warning note 

 or an intentional subdued means of communication. Late in March we may 

 observe a bird convey small sticks, but the birds will stop work if aware of 

 being watched. Roughly, in two weeks the nest will be completed, longer if 

 the weather is cold, rainy or windy. Many nests are abandoned before work 

 on the lining is commenced, from, to me, unaccountable reasons. In only one 

 case have I known an old nest to be used for roosting purposes by the mate of 

 the incubating bird. About the 10th of April is the mean time for fresh sets 

 here, and by the 20th every pair should be incubating. Ordinarily five eggs 

 constitute a set, sometimes four eggs, and sets of six are not rare. Mr. H. 

 W. Carriger of Sonoma County, some forty or fifty miles to the north, in- 

 formed me the birds in his district nearly all laid in March and the sets were 

 mostly of six eggs. The foundation is a bulky affair, composed of a quantity 

 of dead twigs from the live oaks and, being leafless and almost straight, fall 

 readily apart when raised en masse. Then comes the nest proper, of a few 

 coarse rootlets and fibres about the thickness of long horse hair, and lastly the 

 lining, a generous quantity of hair from the tails and manes of cattle and 

 horses, all this well cupped and neatly rounded and capable of being trans- 

 ported intact. The foundation twigs are well built up about the sides of the 

 nest, roughly flushed with the brim. One nest is almost the counterpart of 

 another, except the only nest I found in a cypress tree, and that possessed a 

 liberal quantity of dead cypress twigs mixed in with the oak twigs which were 



1 • 



