THE LONG-CRESTED JAY. 773 
principle in such cases, of each one taking all he can get. Once I 
had a chance of seeing how a band of these guerillas make their 
raids, and though they went at it in good style, they dame out 
very badly indeed. A vagabond troop made a descent upon a 
clump of bushes, where probably they expected to find eggs to 
suck, or at any rate some chance for mischief and amusement ; 
and to their intense joy, they surprised a little owl, quietly digest- 
ing his grasshoppers, with both eyes shut. Here was a lark ! 
and a chance to wipe out a part of the score that the jay family 
keep against the owl tribe, for injuries received time out of mind. 
In the tumult that ensued, the little birds scurried off at once, the 
woodpeekers overhead stopped tapping to listen and look on, and 
a snake that was basking in a sunny spot thought best to crawl 
into his hole. The jays lunged furiously at their enemy, who sat 
helpless, bewildered at the sudden onslaught, trying to look as big 
as possible, with his wings set for bucklers and his bill snapping, 
meanwhile twisting his head till I thought he would wring it off, 
trying to look all ways at once. The impudent jays, emboldened 
by the feeble resistance, grew more and more insolent, till their 
victim made a sudden break through their ranks, and flapped into 
the heart of a juniper tree, hoping to be screened by the tough, 
thick foliage. The jays went trooping after, of course, and I 
hardly know how the fight would have ended, but here I thought it 
time to interfere myself. I got the owl first, as the greater prize, 
it being the rare and curious Pigmy (Glaucidium gnoma) hardly 
bigger than a blue-bird; and shot four of the jays, before they 
made up their minds to be off. The collector has no better chance 
to enrich his cabinet, than when birds are quarrelling with each 
other; and so it has always been with the third party in a diffi- 
culty, ever since the monkey divided cheese for the two cats. 
` Since I have spoken of the jay’s noisiness, I ought to say what 
his voice sounds like; but that is a hard matter, he is such a gar- 
rulous creature, and has such a variety of tones. Ordinarily, he 
screams out at the top of his voice, and keeps screaming till he is 
tired, or till something attracts his attention. This note is some- 
thing like our jay’s, but hoarser and heavier, and can be told in a 
moment, by its base quality, from the harsh outery of either Wood- 
house’s or Maximillian’s jay, both of which birds run higher up 
the scale. He has another way of expressing himself, that sounds 
like the rataplan of our golden-winged woodpecker ; and then 
