Our Bird Comrades

by Leander S. Keyser

Although no musician, the jay has quite an extensive vocal repertory. Besides his loud, challenging call, he frequently utters a series of calls that have a pensive quality and that fill the mind with an indefinable foreboding, especially on chill autumn days when all the woods are bare and gray and the wind is moaning through the boughs. Sometimes when a jay is hidden in a copse, he utters a low, scolding sputter, that seems to express the very quintessence of disgust. It is simply his way of telling you what he thinks of a man who goes prowling about without leave in the precincts of the birds.

Have you ever heard the jay's brief musical roulade? It is only a wisp of melody, rarely rich and suggestive, heard a moment, then gone. You know something sweet has passed by, but something so brief and elusive that you scarcely know what it was. Long after it has dropped on your ear, it continues to haunt your memory, and you try again and again to reproduce it, but in vain. It has a kind of gurgling quality, as if the bird were pressing his notes through an aqueous lyre, if such a conception is possible. Besides, I have, on more than one occasion, heard a jay warble a soft, reserved little lay that was continued for many minutes. It sounded very like the song of the brown thrasher, much modulated and partly uttered under its breath—a sort of flowing, rythmical melody.

A question that disturbs all bird lovers more or less is this: Does the fine white vest of the jay cover a bad heart? Is he really a thief, a nest robber, or even worse, a cannibal, in plumes? May the guardian spirit of all feathered folk forbid that I should blacken the reputation of any bird, yet honesty compels me to give an affirmative answer to the foregoing question. I hasten, however, to say that I do not believe he is as black as he has been painted by some observers, who seem to delight in making out a verdict of capital guilt against him. Although a predatory bird, he is not engaged all the time in bloodthirsty pursuits, but only while his young are in the nest clamoring for food. What are some of the proofs of his vandalism? I will mention a few of them.

First, almost all the small birds make uncompromising war upon him, especially in the breeding season, and many of them show signs of dire distress when he goes near their nests. They often utter pitiful cries, droop their wings, and the bravest of them dash at him savagely, giving him many a cuff on the head and back. The wood pewee and the kingbird succeed, I think, in driving him away; but the vireos and warblers, being so much smaller, suffer greatly from his depredations. If there were no real cause for it, these birds would not be filled with panic and rage on account of the jay's presence. There is strong presumptive evidence that they know him for an outlaw only too well.

The following incident will furnish positive proof of the jay's cannibalistic proclivities: One spring my little boy brought home from the country a young house wren, thinking it would make a delightful pet. It was quite well fledged, but its short tail and white mouth border proclaimed the tenderness of its youth. Fearing that the little thing could not be reared by hand, as it refused all our proffered tidbits, and chirped continually for its parents, I persuaded the lad to give it its freedom. A mother wren living on our premises seemed inclined to adopt the little waif, and we decided to put it under her care. No sooner was the youngling let out of the cage than it flew to the side of the house and began to scramble up the brick wall. It had a hard tug, but at length succeeded in reaching a resting place on a window-shutter of the second story.

Presently the mother wren heard its calls and paid it a visit; but instead of feeding it, she seemed very anxious to drive it away, knowing, no doubt, that there were predaceous enemies in the neighborhood. In her attempts to drive it into hiding, she pecked it on the head and in the mouth. Then she dropped down into a thicket and secured a green worm, with which she flew up to the chirping waif's perch; but I could not make out that she fed the birdling, though she thrust the worm toward its open mouth. Soon after she had gone off the second time, the little bird clambered around the corner of the wall to the lower side of the house, where it rested a while on a narrow shelf.

All this time my boy and I were watching it intently. Suddenly a blue jay came flying over from one of the trees of an adjacent yard, moving in a rapid, stealthy way. First it plunged into an apple tree at the corner of the house; then, before I could collect my wits enough to know what was happening, it darted over to the brick wall, seized the little wren with its bill, and bore it off. The mother wren followed, uttering a pitiful chatter, while the little victim called loudly for help. The blue kidnapper darted to a tree in my neighbor's yard, where he put his booty under his claw on a limb, holding it by one slender leg, while its body dangled below. Hoping still to rescue the little captive, I sprang over into the adjacent yard with a loud shout and much waving of my hands; but my vigorous efforts only caused the jay to pick up the wren in its bill and continue its flight, and neither wren nor jay was seen by me again. This incident furnishes unimpeachable testimony against the character of the blue-coated Robin Hood. There was no faltering or hesitancy in his conduct, but he seized and carried off his little victim as if he were to the manner born, and had become hardened by practice in depredations of the sort.

A farmer once related the following incident to me: A pair of chipping sparrows had built a nest in a bush in his front yard. One day after the little ones had arrived, he heard a distressed chirping coming from the parent birds, and on going to the front yard, he caught a blue jay in the act of picking a callow bantling from the chippie's nest. Holding it in his bill, the jay flew across the field with his prize, and presently returned and bore off a second nestling. By this time the farmer's ire was aroused; he bolted into the house and secured his shotgun, and when the marauding jay came back on the third trip on robbery intent, the man brought him to the ground with a shot that ended his career.

Yet the jay is not wholly bad—indeed, not even half bad. Before me lies a valuable pamphlet entitled "The Blue Jay and His Food," written by F. E. L. Beal, Assistant Biologist of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, whose researches have converted him into something of an apologist for our blue gentleman in feathers. He dissected the stomachs of 292 jays, collected during every month of the year in twenty-two states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. After stating that mineral substances in the stomachs examined averaged over 14 per cent of the total contents, Mr. Beal says: