Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1895 — ABOUT THE BLUE JAY. [ARTICLE]

ABOUT THE BLUE JAY.

A Handsome Bird Which Is • Bully •nd a Coward. From tall, straight chestnut trees a strong, vigorous note sounds afar, • jay! jay ! jay! The note moves about, falling successively from different but not very distant spots. In a few moments the eye lights upon its source—it is the blue jay, the handsomest and most mischievous of our birds. His pale bluo crest distinguishes him at once; so do the white bars on wings and tail, brilliant dark blue wings and tail, pale throat decorated with a trim black collar; sharp black bill that carries a menace to the timid, set firm in front of the strong, erect head. It is a large bird, nearly twelve inches long, or about the size of the blackbird. The bluejay has had a great share of attention from our writers. Long ago Audubon watched its habits closely as he followed it frpm its winter quarters in Carolina to its summer breeding places at the North. He says little good of it, for it i 9 a predatory creature, robbing every nest it can find and sucking the eggs like a crow or tearing in pieces and devouring the young. “One of my friends,” he says, “put a flying squirrel into the cage of a blue jay, merely to preserve it over night, but on looking into the cage the next morning he found the squirrel partly eaten .” A jay destroyed all the birds in an aviary belonging to a man in Charleston. One after another had been killed; the rats were suspected, but no crevice could be found large enough to admit one. Then the mice were accused and war waged against them, but still the birds continued to disappear, first the smaller, then the larger, and finally the large Key West pigeons. ,At length the jay was found to be the destroyer. He was taken out and placed in a cage with a quantity of flour and several small birds which we had just killed. The birds he soon devoured, but the flour he would not touch, and, refusing every other kind of food, he soon died. Audubon undertook to naturalize these birds in England. He went to the trouble of purchasing twenty or more of them to be sent to England and turned out in the woods there . He records some lively studies of them as they were slowly gathered into the big cage he had ordered. “I was surprised,” he says, “to see how cowardly each newly caught bird was when introduced to his brethren who, on being in the cage a day or two, were as gay and frolicsome as if in the woods. The newcomer, on the contrary, would run into a corner, place his head almost in a perpendicular position and remain silent and sulky, with an appearance of stupidity quite foreign to his nature. He would suffer all the rest to walk over him and trample him down without ever changing his position. If corn or fruit was presented to him or even close to his bill he would not so much as look at it. If touched with the hand he would cower, lie down on his side and remain motionless. The next day, however, things were altered; he was again a jay, taking up corn, placing it between his feet, hammering it with his bill, splitting the grain, picking out the kernel and dropping the divided husks. When the cage was filled it was amusing to listen to their hammering, all mounted on their perch, side by side, each pecking at a grain of maize like so many blacksmiths paid by the piece. They drank a great deal, roosted very peaceably j close together and were very pleasing pets.” They bore the sea voyage apparently well, but all died soon after reaching Liverpool. These birds are very expert in discovering any quadruped ; hostile to birds. They will follow a 1 cat or a fox, making a great outcry, as if they would bring every jay and i crow to their aid. They are more tyrannical than brave, domineer over j the feeble, dread the strongest, fly , even from their equals. In many cases they are downright cowards. The cardinal bird will challenge a jay and beat him off his ground, though a much smaller bird; but with birds as with men, a little honest courage j goes a long way against a thief. He ! creeps silently to the nests of absent bird 3, will go the rounds from one nest to another every day and suck the newly laid eggs, as regularly as a physician would call upon his patients. But the advantage is not always on his side, for on his return he sometimes finds Ins nest upset, tli# eggs all gone and his mate in the jaws of a snake.