CANADA JAY. 
199 
tent to eat meat out of the dishes; — watches the hunters while 
baiting their traps for martens, and devours the hait as soon as 
their backs are turned; that they breed early in spring, building 
their nests on pine trees, forming them of sticks and grass, and 
lay blue eggs; that they have two, rarely three young at a time, 
which are at first quite black, and continue so for some time; 
that they fly in pairs; lay up hoards of berries in hollow trees; 
are seldom seen in January, unless near houses; are a kind of 
Mock-bird; and when caught pine away, though their appetite 
never fails them; notwithstanding all which ingenuity and good 
qualities, they are, as we are informed, detested by the natives.* 
The only individuals of this species that I ever met with in 
the United States were on the shores of the Mohawk, a short 
way above the Little Falls. It was about the last of November, 
and the ground deeply covered with snow. There were three 
or four in company, or within a small distance of each other, 
flitting leisurely along the road side, keeping up a Idnd of low 
chattering with one another, and seemed nowise apprehensive 
at my approach. I soon secured the whole; from the best of 
which the drawing in the plate was carefully made. On dissec- 
tion I found their stomachs occupied by a few spiders and the 
aurelise of some insects. I could perceive no difference between 
the plumage of the male and female. 
The Canada Jay is eleven inches long, and fifteen in extent; 
back, wings, and tail, a dull leaden gray, the latter long, cunei- 
form, and tipt with dirty white; interior vanes of the wings 
brown, and also partly tipt with white; plumage of the head 
loose and prominent; the forehead and feathers covering the 
nostril, as well as the whole lower parts, a dirty brownish white, 
which also passes round the bottom of the neck like a collar; 
part of the crown and hind-head black; bill and legs also black; 
eye dark hazel. The whole plumage on the back is long, loose, 
unwebbed, and in great abundance, as if to protect it from the 
rigours of the regions it inhabits. 
* Heakne’s Journey, p. 405. 
