The California Jays 



sound experience, is that within the normal range of the California Jay, 

 fully one-half of the eggs laid by Passerine birds are destined, either as eggs 

 or chicks, to find their way into the blue jay's maw. I know that there 

 are those, and some of them high in authority, who will sharply challenge 

 this statement. It is a familiar, and perhaps not altogether discreditable 

 human fallacy, to refuse to believe ill of any creature. We recall (with 

 mingled pity and contempt in this case) those who to the last refused to 

 credit the reports of German atrocities committed during the Great War. 

 Testimony, concrete evidence, had for them no value. The will to 

 disbelieve was unconquerable. So it is with some of the friends of the 

 Blue Jay. Some, indeed, will claim that our photogravure is "faked." 

 But the fact is that the California Jay is the most gifted, persistent, and 

 methodical destroyer of bird-life that Nature has ever evolved. Nest- 

 robbing is not the exception, the occasional crime of jaydom. The jay, 

 rather, is a professional thug, and thugee is the rule of the clan. In 

 this role the jay is feared and hated by every other bird, and he is the 

 well-deserving butt of excoriations, vituperations, and personal assaults 

 without number. It is worthy of note in this connection that the jay 

 is not much of a fighter. He "takes punishment," or else flees before 

 the avenging fury of a Vireo, a Titmouse, or a Pewee. All is, he never 

 gives up; so that by hook or by crook he almost always manages to 

 secure the contents of a bird's nest, if accessible, and if its whereabouts 

 is known to him. 



In this pursuit the jay not only displays a rare ingenuity, but a 

 satanic fastidiousness as well. He marks the building of a Phainopepla's 

 nest and notes its progress from time to time with an approving eye, 

 but he defers the sacking until the young are of just the right age, say, 

 two days old. Again, he displays a devilish recklessness, for he, too, is 

 an apostle of Schrecklichkeit. If the nest is empty, he pulls it to pieces 

 in disgust; or if it is full, he gobbles the contents and then flings out the 

 lining in boisterous contempt. One bird in sardonic mood returned to a 

 Phainopepla's nest, which he had just robbed (within fifty feet of our 

 porch roof), and deposited a half-eaten acorn in lieu of babies. 



In view of this destructiveness it becomes of interest to estimate the 

 total burden of taxation which the bird world is called upon to bear 

 each season. The subject is a difficult one, and the results obtained by 

 estimate can only represent the order of magnitude of the actual figures. 

 We will do our "figuring" in the open, so that if the reader differs in any 

 of our assumptions, the degree of modification deemed necessary may be 

 apparent in the result. California has an area of 155,980 square miles. 

 Although nearly one-fourth of this area is "Upper Sonoran,"and as 

 such suitable for occupation, I allow only one-tenth, or 15,598 square 



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