- 12 Bird-Lore
Never mind: there is more meat where that came from. and a bird that. in addition to all his other work, has just stolen the dinner for two men cannot be hungry. But he doesn't appear to have lost his interest in your affairs. Instead, he tip-toes around on a limb, with wings and tail half spread. whi tling and talking. and no sooner is a fresh supply of meat in the pan than he sweeps down in the smoke and heat and balances a moment on the long handle of the fryingrpan, calculating the risks of stealing from the pan. Reluctantly he gives up the project and disappears around the corner of the tent. Presently other things begin to disappear. There is a little hollow in the ground, so that the sides of the tent are not pegged down closely. Entering here, he goes to work within three feet of your elbow. being hidden by a box, and, with the tireless industry which is his only virtue, he applies himself to whatever is nearest. You have some cherished candles, your only light for reading; he drags them off by the wicks. There was a dipper of grease for making pitch: that vanishes. You had pinned a rare bug to a Chip; he eats it. You had saved some Duck's wings for the children at home: they are overhauled. The guide left his piece of pork unrolled, and it probably goes off in company with your tobacco, which never turns up after this visitation of Whiskey Jackr When you start to wash up for dinner, there is the rascal eating your soap for dessert! Those who have summered and wintered him say that the only article he has never been seen to steal is kerosene. " Him eat moccasins, fur cap, matches, anythink,” says an lndian to one observer, As for the amount that they will devour and carry off, there is no likelihood of any one ever having a patience to equal their—their “ cov'tousness,” as Jed puts it. There is in this typical account of their actions nothing exaggerated except the probability of its happening in one day.
The Canada Jay is not found everywhere even in Maine. One might camp for years in our woods and never see a Jay, for they are the most local bird that we have in the woods. Roughly speaking, the line of his frontier very nearly coincides with the route of the Canadian Pacific rail- way where it crosses this state. For example. he is found on the Grand Lakes of St. Croix, but not on Dobsy and Nicatowis, four ranges of townships to the south. In that region, which seems perfectly adapted to him. I have camped eight weeks: and my father, in the course of twenty-five years. has spent as many months; yet, with one exception. we have neither seen nor heard a Canada Jay in all that wilderness. On collating the experienCes of four good observers, I find that they can mention but two instances of a Canadian Jay being Seen within fifteen miles of Bangor, and one of these was fully thirty years ago and the other not less than sixty years since; yet hardly more than fifty miles away they are a common resident, Why do they
