376 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



I have received similar testimony from other correspondents in California, 

 and there seems to be no doubt that the California Jay is one of the greatest 

 nuisances wherever it is abundant, which seems to be the case throughout the 

 greater portion of the State, and no one has anything good to say of it. In its 

 general habits it resembles the Blue Jay considerably; it is an equally good 

 mimic, but it is less shy and wary and far more familiar and impertinent. Its 

 flight is slow and laborious, accomplished by considerable flapping of the wings, 

 and only resorted to for short distances and through necessity. On the ground 

 and in bushes it is quick and agile in all its movements, hopping about from 

 limb to limb, and darting through the thickest undergrowth with great ease. It 

 is omnivorous, and away from the settlements its food consists principally of 

 acorns, the seeds of the nut pine, insects of various kinds, wild fruits, and berries. 



Mr. R. H. Beck, of Berryessa, California, writes me that he has seen them 

 with lizards in their claws. In the winter they mostly congregate in the shrub- 

 bery found along the creek bottoms, and among the oak groves in the lower 

 foothills, leaving the more isolated localities in the mountain gorges where many 

 of them spend the summers. In southern California nidification commences 

 occasionally in the beginning of April, and correspondingly later northward, 

 where it is generally at its height during the first two weeks in May. I think 

 it not improbable that in favorable localities two broods are occasionally raised 

 in a season. Mr. F. Stephens took a set of four eggs near Owen's Lake, Inyo 

 County, California, in which incubation had just commenced, as late as June 

 8, 1891, and in a locality where these birds were not likely to have been 

 previously disturbed. 



The nests are usually found on brush-covered hillsides or in creek bottoms, 

 placed in low bushes and thickets, such as blackberry, poison oak, wild goose- 

 berry, currant, hazel, hawthorn, and scrub-oak bushes, or in osage-orange hedges ; 

 occasionally in a small pinon pine or a bushy young fir, and quite frequently 

 on a horizontal limb of an oak, varying in height from 3 to 30 feet from 

 the ground. In the majority of cases the nests are located near water, but 

 sometimes one may be found fully a mile distant. Externally they are com- 

 posed of a platform of interlaced twigs, mixed occasionally with moss, wheat 

 stubble, and dry grass; on this the nest proper is placed, which consists of a 

 lining of fine roots, sometimes mixed with horsehair. No mud enters into the 

 composition of their nests. One now before me, taken by Mr. F. Stephens, as 

 mentioned above, measures 9 inches in outer diameter by 3 \ inches in height; the 

 inner cup is 4 inches in diameter by 2 inches deep. Outwardly it is composed 

 of small twigs of sagebrush, and the lining consists entirely of fine roots; it is 

 compactly built and well constructed. The nests are usually well concealed, and 

 the birds are close sitters, sometimes remaining on the nests until almost touched. 



The number of eggs to a set varies from three to six, sets of four or five 

 being most common; the male assists in the construction of the nest, and to 

 some extent in incubation, which lasts about sixteen days. The young are able 

 to leave the nest in about eighteen days, and follow the parents for some time. 



