158 BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



itant chiefly of forests. During the breeding season the Jays associate 

 in pairs, but in the late summer and autumn it is not unusual to find 

 them in small flocks. I have seen, on several occasions, as many as 

 twenty-five of these birds feeding in beech, chestnut or cedar trees. 

 Both sexes engage in nest-building, which, in this latitude, is begun 

 about the 20th of April. A nest which I saw the birds building, was 

 completed in five days. The nest, a strong bulky structure, composed 

 chiefly of twigs and fine roots, is placed commonly in a tree in the 

 woods ; sometimes, though rarely, in this locality, nests are built in 

 low bushes. The eggs four to six in number, mostly five, are greenish 

 or brownish-gray, spotted with brown. Length about 1.15 inches, 

 width .84 of an inch. In Florida, the Blue Jay* nests some five or six 

 weeks earlier than in this latitude, at least I suppose this to be the 

 case, as I have seen these birds collecting sticks, etc., as early as the 

 first week in March. The Blue Jay and also the "Scrub Jay" (Aphe- 

 locoma floridana) , are in bad repute among the Florida farmers, from 

 the fact that they (particularly the "Scrub Jay") suck the eggs of 

 chickens. 



Audubon writing of the Blue Jay says : 



" It robs every nest it can find, sucks the eggs like the Crow, or tears 

 to pieces and devours the young birds. A friend once wounded a 

 Grouse (Bonasa umbellus), and marked the direction which it fol- 

 lowed, but had not proceeded two hundred yards in pursuit, when he 

 heard something fluttering in the bushes, and found his bird belabored 

 by two Blue Jays, who were picking out its eyes. The same person 

 once put a Flying Squirrel into the cage of one of these birds, merely 

 to preserve it for one night ; but on looking into the cage about eleven 

 o'clock next day, he found the mammal partly eaten. A Blue Jay at 

 Charleston destroyed all the birds of an aviary. One after another 

 had been killed, and the rats were supposed to have been the culprits, 

 but no crevice could be seen large enough to admit one. Then the 

 mice were accused, and war was waged against them, but still the 

 birds continued to be killed ; first the smaller, then the larger, until 

 at length the Keywest Pigeons ; when it was discovered that a Jay 

 which had been raised in the aviary was the depredator. He was 

 taken out, and placed in a cage, with a quantity of corn, flour and 

 several small birds which he had just killed. The birds he soon de- 

 voured, but the flour he would not condescend to eat, and refusing 

 every other kind of food, soon died. In the north, it is fond of ripe 

 chestnuts, and in visiting the trees is sure to select the choicest. 

 When these fail, it attacks the beech nuts, acorns, peas, apples and 

 green corn. In Louisiana, they are so abundant as to prove a nuisance 



* The Florida Blue Jay, a local race technically styled Cyanocitta cristata florincola, is smaller 

 and has less white on tips of secondary and tail feathers than C. cristata. 



