FLORIDA JAY. 
69 
seasons in low thick covers, clumps, or bushes. They 
are most easily discovered in the morning* about sun-rise, 
on the tops of young* live oaks, in the close thickets of 
which they are found in numbers. Their notes are 
greatly varied, and in sound have much resemblance to 
those of the thrush and the blue jay, partaking a little of 
both. Later in the day it is more difficult to find them, 
as they are more silent, and not so much on the tree 
tops as among the bushes, which are too thickly inter- 
woven with briars and saw-palmettos to be traversed ; 
and unless the birds are killed on the spot, which they 
seldom are when struck with fine shot, it is next to 
impossible to come at them in such situations. This 
species, like its relatives, is omnivorous, but, being 
inferior in strength, does not attack large animals. The 
stomachs of our specimens contained small fragments of 
shells, sand, and half-digested seeds. 
The blue jays, though also found in the same localities, 
are not so numerous ; they keep more in the woods, and 
their note is louder. 
The Florida jay is eleven and a half inches long, and 
nearly fourteen in extent ; the bill is one inch and a 
quarter long, hardly notched, and of a black colour, 
lighter at tip ; the incumbent setaceous feathers of the 
base are grayish blue, mixed with a few blackish bristles; 
the irides are hazel brown ; the head and neck above, 
arid on the sides, together with the wings and tail, are 
bright azure ; the front, and the line over the eye, 
bluish white; the lores and cheeks of a duller blue, 
somewhat mixed with black; the back is yellowish 
brown, somewhat mixed with blue on the rump, the 
upper tail-coverts being bright azure ; the inner vanes 
and tips of the quails are dusky, their shafts, as well as 
those of the tail-feathers, being black. All the lower 
parts are of a dirty pale yellowish gray, more intense on 
the belly, and paler on the throat, which is faintly 
streaked with cinereous, owing to the base of the 
plumage appearing from underneath, its feathers having 
blackish, bristly shafts, some of them without webs. 
From the cheeks and sides of the neck, the blue colour 
