JAY FAMILY. 51 



ing from the hills down through the ravine to the orchard, while a 

 return line, each jay bearing a prune, was flying up the ravine to the 

 woods, where, probably, the fruit was secreted and left to rot. The 

 jay habitually stores nuts and grain for future use, and no doubt, 

 urged by a misdirected instinct, lays up fruit for the same purpose, 

 but with a different result. Several hours later the jays were still 

 at work. On another occasion 7 jays were shot successively from 

 a prune tree loaded with fruit, and others continued to come, unter- 

 rified by the report of the gun or the dead bodies of their comrades 

 that lay on the ground beneath the tree. 



The jay is also a notorious pilferer of nuts, notably almonds and 

 English walnuts. He is a skillful nutcracker, and extracts the ker- 

 nel deftly by holding the nut between his feet on a branch, while he 

 hammers it with his beak until he cracks the shell. Only the hard- 

 est nuts defy his powers. A gentleman who owned a large ranch 

 situated in a canyon and on the surrounding hills planted a dozen 

 or more almond trees to raise nuts for home use. When the trees 

 came to bearing, the jays each year carried all the nuts away before they 

 were ripe. "Although," said the owner, "the trees bear a fair crop, 

 I never get a nut; the jays take them all." Another gentleman 

 had a number of very large English walnut trees on his ranch, which 

 was at the upper end of a TOoded canyon. While these nuts were 

 yet unripe, the jays destroyed a great many. Fortunately, when 

 mature, they seem to be too hard for the jays to peck through, so 

 the bulk of the crop was saved. 



But the jays do not frequent orchards entirely for fruit. During 

 May and June the writer many times visited an apple orchard, the 

 leaves of which were badly infested with a small green caterpillar, 

 locally known as the canker worm. When a branch is jarred, 

 these insects let themselves down to the ground on a thread spun 

 for the purpose. Many jays were seen to fly into the orchard, alight 

 in a tree, and then almost immediately drop to the ground. Obser- 

 vation showed that the caterpillars, disturbed by the shfcck of the 

 bird's alighting on a branch, dropped, and that the birds immedi- 

 ately followed and gathered them in. These caterpillars were found 

 in the stomachs of several jays, in one case to the extent of 90 percent 

 of the contents. 



For the laboratory investigation of the food of the California jay, 

 326 stomachs were used. They were distributed through every 

 month, but the greater number were taken from May to September, 

 inclusive. As many of them as possible were collected about orchards, 

 gardens, ranch buildings, and stock yards. In the first analysis the 

 food divides into 27 percent of animal matter and 73 percent of 

 vegetable. The greatest percentage of animal food occurs in April, 

 when it reaches 70 percent. After that it decreases gradually to 



