132 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
He says : — Whenever I hear it during the nighty or even 
during the day (except towards nightfall)^ I know that there 
IS mischief on the stir. Three years ago^ at eleven o^clock 
in broad day, I was at the capture of one of the most expert 
and desperate marauders that ever scourged this part of the 
country. He had annoyed me for a length of time, and was 
so exceedingly cunning that, when we went in pursuit of 
him, he always contrived to escape, either by squatting down 
in the thick cover of the woods, or by taking himself off in 
time, when he saw us approach. At last he owed his cap- 
ture to the magpies. We were directed to the place of his 
depredations by the incessant chatterings of these birds in 
the tops of the trees, just over the spot where he was work- 
mg in his vocation. He had hanged fourteen hares; and 
the ground was so covered with brambles and brushwood 
that when we surprised him, he told us that we never should 
have found him had it not been for the magpies."^^ Such a 
service may well atone for transfixing a few hens^ eggs with 
its beak, or destroying a little unprotected fruit — acts which 
it occasionally is guilty of — not to mention its great utility 
to man in destroying many noxious insects. 
The Canadian Jay {Garmlus Canadensis), familiarly 
known to the fur-traders by the curious name of Whisky- 
