Jay's costume is not confined to this one kind of background-matching. It 

 pictures, perhaps equally well, a much nearer bit of snowy ground, thickly 

 fretted with blue shadows, with some dark twigs or branches relieving against 

 it. Wherever the bird alights in the winter woods, he looks like a vista through 

 the tree in which he sits to one or another of these blue and snow-bright back- 

 grounds. He bears a full obliterative shading (from dark blue and black to 

 white), without which the delicate distance-picturing would be impossible. In 

 summer the Blue Jay's perennially unchanged coloration is less closely fitted 

 to its environment; but the bird is never conspicuous. The blue, seen in 

 the leafy sylvan dimness, is usually soft and dull, and not sharply differen- 

 tiated from the vinous ash-color of the breast and flanks; the white spots, as 

 in all such cases, picture glints of sky, or lighter leaf-vistas; while the dark 

 marks look like sticks and twigs and holes and shadows. (See Fig. 60.) Or 

 again, when the clear, light blue of tail or wings gleams out with especial 

 brightness, it may pass either for sky-shine on the leaves or for a bit of blue 

 sky showing between them. Another boreal winter bird, the American Gos- 

 hawk, in adult plumage, wears a beautiful combination of the color of bare 

 twigs and deeply shadowed snow; and the nuthatches also have the same snow- 

 shadow color on their backs. 



Among the Fringillidcs, the best example of a white-marked northern bird 

 is the Snow Bunting {Passerina nivalis), common to both continents. Some 

 of the redpoll linnets (Acanihis) have much white in their make-up (though 

 mixed and blended rather than in clean spots). Some of the crossbills, and 

 the pine grosbeaks, also have a share of it. But with most of the northern 

 conivorous and bud-eating fringilline birds, red plays an important part, in 

 the winter as well as in the summer plumage. For what are the chief colors 

 of field and forest landscape in the northern winter? Three of them, black 

 and white and blue, have already been named; what are the others? Soft 

 red, gray (of tree trunks), and dusky green. Vinous ash-color ranging fairly 

 into red is the hue of one large and ubiquitous element of these winter scenes, 

 namely, the outer twigs of all the deciduous trees and bushes, covered with 



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