473 



the forests of the Government of Kazan. In the mountains of the Central Ural it is tolerably 

 common, but nowhere so numerous as the Nutcracker and the Jay. It breeds in the pine-woods 

 in the month of April." 



Professor Sundevall doubts its ever having occurred in Germany ; and certainly the record of 

 its occurrence in Silesia, referred to by Gloger, is open to doubt. Naumann also writes that it 

 has been met with once in the Tatra mountains and twice in Silesia, without, however, giving 

 very close details ; and it is possible that he may have been mistaken. It has not been recorded, 

 as I am informed by Mr. Benzon, in Denmark in this century; but in the last, about 1770, it was 

 taken alive, at least twice, on Christianso, near Borgholm, and was in the possession of a 

 thoroughly good ornithologist, Johann Dietrich Petersen, who wrote, for that time, a most 

 remarkable work, ' Christiansos Fuglehistorie,' which was not printed, but is in two folios of MS. 

 in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. 



To the eastward the Siberian Jay is found throughout the Amoor country, where it was met 

 with by Von Middendorff, Radde, and Schrenck. The first-named of these travellers " did not 

 observe it further north than Turuchansk ; but near Jakutsk, in the Stanowoi mountains, and on 

 the southern shores of the Sea of Ochotsk, it was numerous." Dr. Gustav Radde met with it 

 near Lake Baikal and in the Lower Angara valley, but never in the Bureja mountains. During 

 the three months he wandered through the forests of the Baikal he only once saw it ; but later on 

 he observed it about 60 versts below Irkutsk, in a pine-forest ; and here it is said at times to be 

 numerous during the summer. Von Schrenck observed it most numerous at the mouth of the 

 Amoor, and on the island of Saghalien, and near the Nikolaieffsk Post saw it almost daily from 

 August to February. In June and July he met with it scarcely less frequently in the conifer- 

 woods of the Bay of Castries and at Kidsi. Higher up the Amoor it is rarer, but was met with 

 on the Lower Ussuri. Messrs. Dybowski and Parvex merely record it as being rare in Darasun. 

 In its habits the Siberian Jay is fearless and confiding, and reminded me much of its close 

 relation in America, Perisoreus canadensis, which, from its tameness, and its habit of frequenting 

 the hunters' camps and sharing with them the produce of the chase, has acquired the name of 

 Camp-bird and Moose-bird. Several times when out shooting in the wild forests of Finland, and 

 seated, eating my frugal meal, I have been startled by the appearance close to me of the Siberian 

 Jay, or by hearing its weird melancholy cry in my immediate proximity; for the bird flies so 

 silently that it drops on to a twig near one like a leaf wafted by the autumn wind. 



The notes of the Siberian Jay are strange and weird. Wheelwright not inaptly speaks of its 

 call-note as a " mew ;" for though it may best be expressed by the syllables tjah, tjah, it has a 

 distant resemblance to a screaming mew. Mr. Collett informs me that besides this note, which, 

 with modulations, is the only one I have ever heard, " it sometimes utters a few mellow and 

 flute-like notes, though these latter are but seldom heard." 



" When passing through the large pine-woods in the southern valleys of Norway, where the 

 death-like silence is only at long intervals broken by a passing flock of Titmice, accompanied by 

 some Golden-crested Wrens and a few Creepers (Certhiw), my attention has been suddenly 

 attracted by a peculiar clucking note from the nearest tree, caused by a flock of the Siberian Jay, 

 which, with every sign of curiosity, were gazing at us from the lower branches of the firs. They 

 are not shy birds ; and, far from flying away on our approach, they hover noiselessly still nearer to 



2 x 



