JAY 
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in ground-colour, not very thickly spotted with 
dull brown and pale green and grey ; but they are 
altogether fainter and more faded in appearance, 
and the ground is a distinctly dirtier greenish or 
yellowish shade, instead of a clear, clean tint of 
light greenish-blue. The similar bird with yellow 
beak, instead of red, which is sometimes seen 
in aviaries, is the Alpine Chough {Pyrrhocorax 
alpinus)^ an interesting and conspicuous bird of 
the Swiss mountains. 
JAY. 
{Garrulus glandarius.) 
Jay-pyat. — In spite of much persecution at the 
hands of gamekeepers, the Jay is a woodland bird 
which is still to be seen and heard in some 
numbers in most parts of the kingdom. He has 
undoubtedly the family failing, like most of the 
Crow-birds to which he belongs, of a taste for eggs 
and nestlings as an occasional relish to his diet, but 
the sum total of his ravages among the pheasants' 
nests and coops at breeding-time is rarely anything 
considerable, smaller birds being more in his own 
particular line. Considering his character in this 
respect, it is an amusing and edifying spectacle to 
see him leading the chorus of shocked abuse with 
