The Blue Jay 
87 
by Miss Ellen E. Webster, who devoted her time one season to careful 
observation of a nesting family, easily gaining the confidence of the sitting 
mother. 
“She sat very closely,” Miss Webster notes, “never being absent over 
three or four minutes. She noticed things about, preened her feathers 
often, stood up on the nest, looked at the eggs, moved about, and went 
through motions that I suppose were made in turning the beloved eggs. 
About once an hour the male provided his mate with 
food, brought in his mouth. He always alighted near Family 
the bottom of the tree and hopped to her presence 
branch by branch ; and almost invariably fed her from the same side of 
the nest? Everything was enacted very quietly, but if he showed any 
inclination to linger near the home, the female would hiss and even peck 
at him to hurry him away about his business.” 
On the morning of June 15 Miss Webster saw three scrawny fledg- 
lings in the nest, and began to watch affairs with renewed interest : 
“That forenoon, when the male brought food, the female took it from 
him and fed the babies. In the afternoon Father Jay was allowed to 
feed them, in which task he became so proficient that he soon not only 
had the providing, but nearly always the feeding to do also, giving a 
mouthful to one, two, or all three at one visit. ... I witnessed the 
feeding of the young ninety-nine times, and feel sure that the female did 
not bring food to the babies half a dozen times. The only distinguishing 
marks of the parents were their habits. When one brooded I was sure 
it was the female, and I am positive that she returned again and again 
and covered the young without feeding them, and scarcely ever did the 
children even open their mouths to ask food of her. She never went far 
away, and the slightest disturbance in the home pine would bring her 
back in an instant. As soon as breakfast was served gymnastics were re- 
quired ; and these daily exercises were droll. The youngsters stood up 
in the nest, stretched themselves as high as possible, then dropped down 
again, lifted their wings high over their backs and flapped them ener- 
getically ; extended their necks, and, in fact, probably exercised the whole 
body. Often they visited the rim of the nest, but made no attempt to 
fly.” 
A Bad 
Reputation 
It is at this season of domestic responsibilities that the Blue Jay has 
made for himself an evil reputation as of a thief and marauder in fine 
clothes — a sort of Raffles in the woodland community. Blue Jays have 
been accused of crime ever since they became known. 
Audubon figures them on his folio plate with broken 
eggs on their bills and in their claws, and moralizes 
extensively on so much malice attired “in a garb so resplendent. 
A biographer is hard to find who has not seen, or been told of, 
cases of Blue Jays feeding on the eggs or fledglings of their neighbors, or 
wantonly throwing them out of the cradle. It is a dreadful record ; yet 
most writers fail to specify — neglect to relate details of the atrocities 
charged, and I, for one, have a feeling that the wickedness has been 
exaggerated. Indeed, F. E. L. Beal, of the U. S. Biological Survey, who 
