he is a dignified character. To touch the hem of his robe to the food would have been defilement, so he went about pressing his
wings tight to his sides, sometimes giving them a little nervous shake. To smile at this sober-minded person seems most disrespectful, but the solemnity of his gambols was surely provocative of mirth. Not content with turning his long-billed head judicially from side to side as he advanced through the scraps, if the biscuit on his left was not to his mind, with one great ungainly leap he would box half the compass and plant his big feet before a potato on his right. This he would proceed to probe with a grave air of interrogation, and if he decided the case in the negative would withdraw his beak and pass to the next case on the docket. Once when the potato was half a waffle, he pried it up tentatively with his long bill, and at last, deciding in its favor, proceeded to fly off with it, his long legs
dangling ludicrously behind him.
The Oregon Jays were quite unlike their Crow cousins. They would come flying in, talking together in sociable fashion, and drop down so noiselessly you could but be struck by the difference between fluffy owl-like feathers and stiff quills. Sometimes one of the Jays would touch the side of a tree a moment before dropping lightly to the ground. All their motions were quick and easy, if not actually graceful, and they worked rapidly, with none of the profound deliberation shown at times by the Nutcracker. The smaller pieces of food they ate; the larger ones they carried off, usually in their bills, occasionally in their claws. In eating, the Jay would sometimes
OREGON JAY
adopt the Blue Jay style and put his food under his foot, where he could pull it apart, throwing up his head to swallow. When the food was soft and too large to swallow at one gulp, both Crows and Jays would carry it to an evergreen, lay it down on a twig before them, and there eat comfortably, as from a plate. Both birds often flew to the ledges of the cliff for food that had lodged there in falling, and it made a busy scene when eight or ten of the big fellows were flying about the place at once.
(To be concluded.)
