202 



THE CONDOR 



Vol.'XX 



caught and permitted themselves to be handled at will, but always resented it. 

 The one with the injured wing soon became the tamest, eating readily from my 

 hand. 



"The principal food given them was meat, cooked or uncooked, bread, 

 table scraps, apples and bananas. Their appetites were prodigious, and on one 

 occasion the three ate both breasts of a teal duck, a large slice of bread over 

 one-half inch thick, and half of an apple in one day. It was all eaten, for they 



soon became weaned of their 

 natural habit of hiding food. 

 "The most remarkable 

 trait noticed, was their com- 

 plete avoidance of each oth- 

 er, absolutely no attention 

 being paid by any one to 

 any of the others, not even 

 when I would deliberately 

 feed the choice morsels to 

 one bird. Early this spring 

 I fitted up a thick canopy of 

 yellow pine over the founda- 

 tion for a nest, hoping the 

 power of suggestion would 

 cause them to mate, but this 

 attempt was a total failure. 

 The birds continued to ig- 

 nore each other and the only 

 use made of my attempt at a 

 nest was to fill it with bread 

 crusts and other refuse. It 

 is of course possible that all 

 three birds were of the same 

 sex." 



I have just today (June 

 15) learned that since Mr. 

 Lincoln's departure for U. 

 S. service, about a month 

 ago, two of the three birds 

 have died, and the third was 

 turned loose. None was sent 

 to the Museum and their sex 

 is now undeterminable. 



In March of this year, 

 I received word that a par- 

 ty in the Cripple Creek 

 district had located a "camp robber's" nest that contained three eggs. The 

 next morning (March 14) going about a hundred miles by train and ten by 

 wagon and afoot, I found my man, who showed me the bird and the "camp 

 robber's" nest and eggs at the altitude of 9,300 feet; but the last mentioned 

 proved to be those of the Clarke Nutcracker — also locally termed "camp rob- 

 ber" — and not the Rocky Mountain Jay, as I had hoped. Very welcome, but 



Fig. 39. Woods near Alma, Colorado; Feb- 

 ruary, 1917. The home of the Rocky 

 Mountain Jay. 



