30 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nature Studies Close by Yellowstone Park 
By George B. Pastor. 
ATE last year, I spent two 
months and more in a little 
cabin on the Continental Di¬ 
vide, in Wyoming, not far 
from the Yellowstone Park. 
The elevation was about 8,500 
feet, and at that altitude, the 
jay known as “’camp-trobber” 
was very plentiful, and I saw a good deal of 
them, and took note of some habits of theirs 
whch interested me greatly. 
The birds are said to breed very early in the 
year, in February or March, wben the snow in 
that altitude in the Wyoming Rockies lies many 
feet deep on the ground. Now their natural food 
is undoubtedly of animal origin exclusively. I do 
not think they ever touch seeds or the like. In 
summer they subsist on grasshoppers, beetles 
and such provender. But in the late fall, when 
the cold has killed all this sort of insect life or 
driven it to shelter under ground, the birds work 
as assiduously as ever. In fact, they put in longer 
hours than any feathered creatures I know any¬ 
thing about. I have seen them working until it 
was almost too dark to discern them. 
They almost always work on the ground, and 
apparently in October and November upon the 
chrysalies of bugs and the eggs or frozen bodies 
of hoppers. Whether this food passes at once 
into the stomach or craw, to be regurgitated, or 
whether they have a pouch or extension of the 
gullet, I do not know. But it is certain that 
when they are “chuck up,” they fly to a tree not 
far away, ‘kache” the load and return and re¬ 
peat the process. 
They invariably work in pairs, male and fe¬ 
male, uttering the while, faint, soft, purring 
notes to each other. They fiercely resent the in¬ 
trusion into their bailiwick of another pair, and 
more than one pair is seldom seen in the same 
place. They are very tame and harmless, and 
must do an immense amount of good, through 
the destruction of wood-boring beetles, grasshop¬ 
pers, and other cicadae- But their sinister name 
doubtless leads many a thoughtless person to 
shoot them on sight. 
This jay really does no harm about camp that 
is worth mentioning, and he is so companionable 
that I like very much to have him around. To 
be sure, he is inordinately devoted to the pur¬ 
veying of fresh, clean meat, especially the fat, 
and when any is exposed about camp, he will un¬ 
doubtedly give it his most careful attention. But 
he toll that he levies is so trifling, and he is so 
clean about it that I never interfere with him. 
Last fall, the pair that haunted the cabin were 
so tame that they would sometimes alight on 
me, if 1 stood quietly near the elk quarters 
hanging on the shady side of the door, before 
lighting on the meat. And when before meal¬ 
time. I threw out meat trimmings, there was al¬ 
ways a scramble. It was astonishing what stor¬ 
age capacity they had. 
Tame as they were, they would never let me 
see in What tree or in what crevice they stored 
the plunder. If 1 followed them, they simply 
sat and watched me, without doing anything, no 
matter if they were so filled, as was often the 
case, that they could not close their bills togeth¬ 
er, until I had gone away. Or they would fly 
farther on, out of my sight. 
While at work, they sometimes “coughed up,” 
so to speak, the dejecta of previous meals. But 
it was the hard shells of bugs, or the overings 
of pupae, never any shred of the meat and fat 
they were so busily storing.' 
Repeated observation has convinced me that 
the number of these birds in any locality has a 
causal relation to the recent climatic conditions. 
That is, a severe winter and late spring seems to 
make serious inroads upon them, and the natural 
.increase also is apparently curtailed. This has 
led me to believe that all this provision is exerted 
on behalf of the expected nestlings. 
I take it that the blue jay, which in winter lives 
almost entirely upon the larvae and eggs which 
he finds in trees, has a hard time o l f it, and that 
this is in part at least why he is so comparative¬ 
ly scarce in the Rockies, where he is greatly 
outnumbered by the “camp-robber,” in compari¬ 
son with whom the jay is as the grasshopper, in 
Aesop’s tale, to the ant. For while the blue jay 
does occasionally store away fragments of meat, 
it is only, I believe, when he happens to have 
more on hand or in sight than he can eat, and he 
then disposes of the surplus, by hiding it, just as 
an overfed dog does with extra bones. 
Everyone who has camped in the Rockies is 
familiar with the short-tailed wild mouse. He 
is a great nuisance about camp, delighting to ex¬ 
plore the recesses of every sack, and always tak¬ 
ing to its interior the shortest route, using his 
teeth for the purpose. About this cabin, which 
was a one-roomed affair, with dirt floor and 
rodf, full of holes, he was a veritable pest. He 
loved at night to burrow his way around 
through the roof, made of pine saplings, with 
earth loosely thrown on, and this not only made 
a great racket, but invariably led to a plentiful 
shower of dry dirt on my face. 
With a small trap, I used to catch one speci¬ 
men every night, but the supply never seemed to 
diminish in the slightest degree. Every morning, 
the carcass of the last victim was thrown out, 
and much to my surprise, it was evidently re¬ 
garded by the “robbers” as the greatest tit-bit of 
all, for no sooner did it strike the ground, than 
it was pounced upon, not matter how attractive 
and numerous the scraps of meat within reach, 
and borne off bodily to be secreted In manifest 
triumph. It had never occurred to me that mice 
might be preyed upon by a bird like this, though 
it may easily be that this is the case. No strang¬ 
er this, than that I had a few weeks previously 
taken from the maw of a black-spotted brook 
trout weighing less than two pounds a very 
large mouse. 
Alongside my camp-robbers, there often work¬ 
ed about the cabin, a number of the Jays known 
as cedar-birds. These were much shyer and 
less attractive. Though I cannot vouch for it, I 
was convinced in my own mind, that they stole 
the treasures which the camp-robbers had laid 
up for themselves. The cedar-bird I never saw 
storing anything. But he is equally fond of 
fresh meat, and I have seen him prowling 
around the scene of the robbers’ activities, and 
taking scraps of meat and fat from crannies in 
trees, which I am very sure he never garner¬ 
ed up himself. 
But, curiously enough, though camp-robbers 
will attack another pair of their own kind, that 
ventures upon their preserve, they seem to have 
no feeling whatever about the cedar-birds, and 
both will feed peaceably together. 
The frozen elk meat was a source of tempta¬ 
tion not alone to the Jays, but perhaps most of 
aid to the little striped ground-squirrels. • They 
simply could not keep away from it, and as they 
were not so nice in their habits I rather resented 
their depredations. But it was useless. I hung 
the meat on the end of ropes from the roof- 
beams projecting over the end of the shack. This 
puzzled them for perhaps half a day, but not 
longer. They simply ran out on the beams, 
down the ropes, and were so tame that they 
would nibble away, when I was standing at less 
than arm’s length away. I caught one by the 
end of his tail, but he promptly vamoosed leav¬ 
ing me with the tuft of bushy hair adhering to 
its thin sheath of skin, between my fingers. The 
figure he cut thereafter, running about with the 
end of his tail bare to the bone was rather ludi¬ 
crous. Aesop tries to make us believe that the 
fox Which lost his tail, encountered the derision 
of his fellows, but this little chipmunk never 
seemed to mind his loss a particle. 
During my absence the magpies used to pay a 
A 
