144 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
which all the little birds of the wood greet the 
appearance in daylight of a strayed and blinking 
Owl. The loud, harsh, screeching note of the Jay 
is more familiar than his visible form, but he is 
easily to be recognised by the large white spot 
above the tail, and his alternately floating and 
dropping flight, as he leaves one copse for another, 
or crosses a ride or clearing in the wood. Seen 
close at hand, he is a very handsome bird, with his 
mottled, erectile crest-feathers, bright blue hackle in 
his black-and-white-tipped wing, black moustache- 
marks over a white throat, and general plumage of 
clear brown above and fawn below. The white 
tail-spot in flight gives him the same appearance as 
the Wheatear or the Bullfinch. The nest, too, is 
often much like a magnified Bullfinch's, when it is 
a rather loose afl^air of dry black twigs, lined with 
brown fibrous roots. The cup, however, is a deep 
one, unlike the Bullfinch's shallow saucer. At 
other times it is a more massive and well-built 
structure of sticks. It is generally placed between 
eight and twenty feet above the ground, in a variety 
of situations, such as in a thick thorn-bush, or the 
top of a thick, dark hazel thicket, or in an evergreen 
spruce or fir-tree, or resting against the bole or in 
a fork of a smooth beech-tree. In this last situa- 
tion the nest is apt to be particularly loose and 
slight. There always seems a peculiar attraction 
