Blue Jay 285 
This genus, containing two species now divided into ten geographical 
races, is confined to North America, including the high plateau of Mexico 
and Guatemala. Only one species is commonly met with in Colorado, 
but the eastern Blue Jay occurs as a straggler. 
Key or THE SPEOIES. 
A. Below blue, becoming dusky on the chest. 
C. stelleri diademata, p. 286. 
B. Below dirty white, with a black collar across the chest. 
C. cristata, p. 285. 
Blue Jay. Cyanocitia cristata. 
A.O.U. Checklist no 477—Colorado Records—H. G. Smith 05, 
p- 81; 08, p. 186; Henderson 05, p. 82. 
Description.—Adult—General colour above blue, with a purplish 
tinge ; feathers of the crown elongated and erectile, forming a crest ; 
patch round nostrils, above and below the eye, chin, throat and rest of 
under-parts greyish-white ; lores, a few frontal feathers and a post- 
ocular band which extends back and joins a crescentric band across the 
chest black ; primary-coverts, secondaries and tail cobalt blue, narrowly 
barred with black and tipped with white (except the two central 
rectrices); primaries dark ashy on the inner, plain azure-blue on outer 
webs ; iris brown, bill and legs black. Length about 11-0; wing 5-10; 
tail 5-10; culmen -90; tarsus 1:3. Young birds are very similar to 
the adults, but the colours are less bright and less sharply defined. 
Distribution.—Eastern North America from Manitoba and Nova 
Scotia south through eastern Colorado and eastern Texas to the Gulf 
of Mexico, but not Florida. The Blue Jay has only recently been 
recorded from Colorado. Possibly it has only lately reached our border 
as Brunner (‘‘ Birds of Nebraska,”’ p. 70) states that in that State it is 
rapidly spreading westward. H. G. Smith obtained one specimen, 
a female, on 21st of May, 1904, close to Wray in Yuma co., near the 
Nebraska border, and saw several others, some of which were engaged 
in building a nest. In the following year he found them nesting in 
Dry Willow Creek, some little distance south-east of Wray, and in 1907 
obtained a female at Holly, in the south-east corner of the State; while 
Miss Jennie M. Patten (Henderson 05) identified a specimen 
on November Ist, 04, at Yuma, some twenty-five miles further east. 
There is a female in the Aiken collection, taken by Aiken close to 
Limon on May 27th, 1905, and I am told that it was seen by Mr. 
Schulze in Colorado Springs, October 10th, 1903, so that it will 
probably be found more commonly in the future. 
