The jay has a shocking reputation in the bird world.
It is accused by la Fontaine of stealing peacock's feathers; and, like all reputations made by man, this one, perhaps, is least deserved; another accusation brought against it—and a far more serious charge in the eyes of the birds—is that it eats the eggs of its smaller and weaker brethren. So the hatred in which birds hold this glutton is in proportion to the number of eggs they lay; the titmouse, for instance, which sometimes lays as many as twenty to twenty-five tiny eggs, is the most relentless against this robber; next come fourgons, which lay fifteen; chaffinches, which lay five or six; and last, redbreasts and warblers, which lay three or four. So they take a live jay, stretch out his wings and pull the feathers from it.
It is not a very humane process, but it is very efficacious.
The cry of the jay is a frightful noise: as each feather is pulled out, the jay utters that cry, and at each cry flocks of chaffinches, titmice, fourgons, warblers, and robins come flying down to enjoy their enemy's discomfort; for they are not deceived, they recognise his cry as one of pain.
But this time they are punished for their want of forgiveness towards their enemy, and the lime-twigs execute justice on their hard hearts.
The success of the third means depends entirely on the degree of skill with which the bird-catcher has been naturally endowed, in producing sounds to imitate the songs of birds, by the aid of blades of couch-grass or a piece of glossy silk. The musician who can imitate birds' notes requires no jay or owl to help him; he retires into his hut, counterfeits cries of distress of the different birds he wants to catch, and all the birds of the same species that are in the district flock to the call.
I must say, however, that I have met few pipurs (and I have known a great number) who have reached such a pitch of perfection.
But Boudoux, who spoke no dead language, and could only talk his own among living ones, and that very imperfectly, took, in the matter of birds, the first rank as a philologist, and not merely in the forest of Villers-Cotterets, but, I dare venture to assert, in any forest of the world.
There was not an ornithological language or jargon or patois that he could not talk, from the language of the crow to that of the wren.
He held those of his confrères in contempt who made use of grass and silk, for he could imitate the cry of an owl so perfectly that I have seen one come and perch on his hat as on the helmet of Minerva.