50 
NATURE NOTES. 
intruding into its domain. They seerh to prefer salt-water 
hunting grounds to fresh-water, being much more frequently seen 
along the sea coast or mouths of rivers than on inland lakes. I 
have often watched one particular bird perched on some branch 
overhanging the water’s edge, with its sharp beak pointed down- 
wards on the qiii vive for a fish. A bird will sit like this, quite 
motionless, for a long time, making an occasional downward dart, 
and then if not successful it will fly off to some other post of 
vantage to repeat the same thing again. 
The most ubiquitous and the most mischievous of birds in 
British Columbia are the blue jay {Garrnlus cristatus) and the 
American “ robin ” {Turdus viigratorius), which is not a robin at 
all, but a species of thrush. The former is a very handsome bird, 
with brilliant blue plumage and a rich crest, which it invariably 
raises when it sees you are looking ; it also is very fond of flaunt- 
ing its tail and strutting up and down to show itself off. It feeds 
on berries, but chiefly on fruit such as cherries, strawberries and 
apples, &c. Its habits are very much the same as our familiar jay, 
which is its cousin. It measures about twelve inches in length and 
its note is “shee-wrk, shee-wrk.” The blue jay seems very fond 
of the densest woods and is not often seen in open ground. It 
often perches on a tree in front of you, and then, when you come 
up to within a few yards of it, oflf it flies to another tree, not far 
off, uttering its shrill note. One day I followed a bird for quite 
a long while and the jay seemed to enjoy the fun immensely ; 
perhaps rather more than I did, as the part of the bush through 
which it led me was by no means easy to get through. 
The second of these two birds, the American “ robin ” so- 
called, is about the same size as our well-known thrush. The 
upper parts of the body are a dull blackish grey, as are the wings 
and tail ; the breast and lower parts are of a cinereous brown. 
This bird is almost as mischievous as the blue jay, eating apples 
off trees and stealing cherries and other fruit. There seem to 
be an enormous number both of the blue jay and .\merican 
“ robin ” in British Columbia, and, as may well be imagined, 
they are rather destructive to farmers. This being the case, it 
may seem rather incongruous to call them “ friends.” They 
certainly do a great deal of harm, but people are always apt to 
calculate and often over-estimate the evil done by such birds, 
rather than take any heed of the good done by the destruction of 
insects or seeds of noxious weeds. Does it not do more good to 
the farmer for a bird to eat some fruit and let it destroy the 
insect, which probably represents so many hundreds like itself ? 
It is far better to lose some fruit and have the insects destroyed, 
than to allow them to go on increasing out of all proportion, and 
perhaps finally losing all the fruit, simply because the natural 
limitations are put a stop to by the ultimate extermination of 
the birds themselves. Then there is still another side to the 
question. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that any bird 
which is known to do some harm is exterminated, then the birds 
