ntains, and the whole tribe betook itself to the
inaccessible hills. In despair I abandoned the search, and set up my
tent in the middle country, without a thought of the bonny blue bird.
One June morning I seated myself by my window, which looked out upon a
goodly stretch of lawn dotted with trees of many kinds, and behold the
long-desired object right before my eyes!

The blue jay himself pointed it out to me; unconsciously, however, for
he did not notice me in my distant window. From the ground, where I was
looking at him, he flew directly to a pine-tree about thirty feet high,
and there, near the top, sat his mate on her nest. He leaned over her
tenderly; she fluttered her wings and opened her mouth, and he dropped
into it the tidbit he had brought. Then she stepped to a branch on one
side, and he proceeded to attend to the wants of the young family, too
small as yet to appear above the edge.

The pine-tree, which from this moment became of absorbing interest, was
so far from my window that the birds never thought of me as an observer,
and yet so near that with my glass I could see them perfectly. It was
also exactly before a thick-foliaged maple, that formed a background
against which I could watch the life of the nest, wherever the sunlight
fell, and whatever the condition of the sky; so happily was placed my
blue jay household.

I observed at once that the jay was very gallant and attentive to his
spouse. The first mouthful was for her, even when babies grew clamorous,
and she took her share of the work of feeding. Nor did he omit this
little politeness when they went to the nest together, both presumably
with food for the nestlings. She was a devoted mother, brooding her
bantlings for hours every day, till they were so big that it was hard to
crowd them back into the cradle; and he was an equally faithful father,
working from four o'clock in the morning till after dusk, a good deal
of the time feeding the whole family. I acquired a new respect for
_Cyanocitta cristata_.

I had not watched the blue jays long before I was struck with the
peculiar character of the feathered world about me, the strange absence
of small birds. The neighbors were blackbirds (purple grackles),
Carolina doves, golden-winged and red-headed woodpeckers, robins and
cardinal grosbeaks, and of course English sparrows,--all large birds,
able to hold their own by force of arms, as it were, except the
foreigner, who maintained his position