AMERICAN MAGPIE. 315 



grass are worked into the general fabric. I did not measure any of them before removal, 

 and afterwards accurate measurement could not be made, as, being loosely constructed, 

 they spread and flattened. They must have been about as deep as wide, deep enough 

 to receive the whole body of the bird, only part of the head £tnd tail showing above the 

 edge. The birds are close sitters, several not leaving till the nest was shaken, and I 

 could have caught some of them with my hand. On being driven from the nest, they 

 would alight on an adjoining limb, and, with lowered head and half-extended wings, 

 utter their peculiar querulous cry. One nest contained five eggs, six contained four each, 

 and two three each; both sets of three were partly incubated. Two nests were taken 

 May 5, five on the 10th, and two on the 11th, 1879. The eggs are quite pointed at 

 the small end. The ground-color is bluish-white, splashed all over with small spots of 

 dark brown, thickest at the large end. 



"The nest is easily seen, and I am surprised that so few have been found. The bird 

 is a restless wanderer, choosing the most unfrequented places. It often changes its 

 haunts, and may be plenty one year where it is scarcely found in another. Probably 

 the food supply has something to do with its movements. It is gregarious, and. partly 

 so even in the breeding sleason. It is locally, and very appropriately, called the "Pinon 

 Bird," for its home is in the pinon pines, and it is rarely seen far from them." 

 NAMES : Pinon Jay, Maximilian's Jay. 



SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Gymnorbinus cyanocephalus Pr. Max Wied (1841). Gymaocitta cyanocephala 

 . Bonap. (1850). CYANOCEPHALUS CYANOCEPHALUS Stejn. (1684). 



■IJBSCRIPTION : "General color, dull blue, paler on the abdomen, the middle of which is tinged with ash; 

 the head and neck of a much deeper and more intense blue, darker on the crown. Chin and forepart 

 of throat, whitish, streaked with blue. 



"Length, 10.00 inches; wing, 5.90; tail, 4.50 inches." (B. B. & R. II, p. 260.) 



AMERICAN MAGPIE. 



Pica pica budsonica Jordan. 



T|v, IKE all the mer&bersj of this family, the Magpie is a bird of bad reputation, a 

 . ,11^^ rascal, a thief, a murderer, a robber, and a rogue in general. It is distributed 

 over Western North America north to Alaska, south to New Mexico and Arizona, east 

 to the base of the Rocky Mountains. "Magpies," says Dr. Elliott Coues, "are very 

 common at Fort Randall through the winter, as at other points higher up the river. 

 They keep mostly in troops in the wooded river-bottom, and, notwithstanding the 

 severity of the weather, they are not familiar and impudent, as they are represented to 

 be in times of scarcity. In fact I have always found them wary and watchful, on the 

 .alert for suspicious approach, and rather difficult to shoot. When a flock is feeding, as 

 they habitually do, down among the bushes, one or more are perched, apparently as 

 sentinels, on the high trees overhead, and the hidden birds below are instantly warned 

 of danger by their discordant screams. I have more than once succeeded in getting 



