t 



M CANADA JAY. 



every thing it can come at — is bold, and comes even into the tent 

 to eat meat out of the dishes : — watches the hunters while baiting 

 their traps for martens, and devours the bait as soon as their backs 

 are turned ; that they breed early in spring, building their nests 

 on pine trees, forming them of sticks and grass, and lay blue 

 eggs ; that they have two, rarely three young at a time, which are 

 at first quite black, and continue so for some time ; that they fly 

 in pairs ; lay up hoards of berries in hollow trees ; are seldom 

 seen in January unless near houses ; are a kind of Mock-bird ; 

 and when caught pine away, tho their appetite never fails them ; 

 notwithstanding all which ingenuity and good qualities, they are, 

 as we are informed, detested by the natives.^ 



The only individuals of this species that I ever met with in 

 the United States were on the shores of the Mohawk, a short way 

 above the Little Falls. It was about the last of November, and 

 the ground deeply covered with snow. There were three or four 

 in company, or within a small distance of each other, flitting lei- 

 surely along the road side, keeping up a kind of low chattering 

 with one another, and seemed no ways apprehensive at my ap- 

 proach. I soon secured the whole ; from the best of which the 

 drawing in the plate was carefully made. On dissection I found 

 their stomachs occupied by a few spiders and the aureliae of some 

 insects. I could perceive no difference between the plumage of the 

 male and female. 



The Canada Jay is eleven inches long, and fifteen in extent; 

 back, wings, and tail, a dull leaden grey, the latter long, cunei- 

 form, and tipt with dirty white ; interior vanes of the wings brown, 

 and also partly tipt with white ; plumage of the head loose and 

 prominent; the forehead and feathers covering the nostril, as well 

 as the whole lower parts a dirty brownish white, which also passes 

 round the bottom of the neck like a collar; part of the crown and 



* He arne's Journey, p. 405. 



