his knightly soul mount to
the castle of his sweetheart and his babies. He alighted much lower,
often at the foot of the tree, and passed jauntily up the winding way
that led to them, hopping from branch to branch, pausing on each, and
circling the trunk as he went; now showing his trim violet-blue coat,
now his demure Quaker-drab vest and black necklace; and so he ascended
his spiral stair.

There is nothing demure about the blue jay, let me hasten to say, except
his vest; there is no pretension about him. He does not go around with
the meek manners of the dove, and then let his angry passions rise, in
spite of his reputation, as does that "meek and gentle" fellow-creature
on occasion. The blue jay takes his life with the utmost seriousness,
however it may strike a looker-on. While his helpmeet is on the nest, it
is, according to the blue jay code, his duty, as well as it is plainly
his pleasure, to provide her with food, which consequently he does;
later, it is his province not only to feed, but to protect the family,
which also he accomplishes with much noise and bluster. Before the young
are out comes his hardest task, keeping the secret of the nest, which
obliges him to control his naturally boisterous tendencies; but even in
this he is successful, as I saw in the case of a bird whose mate was
sitting in an apple-tree close beside a house. There, he was the soul of
discretion, and so subdued in manner that one might be in the vicinity
all day and never suspect the presence of either. All the comings and
goings took place in silence, over the top of the tree, and I have
watched the nest an hour at a time without being able to see a sign of
its occupancy, except the one thing a sitting bird cannot hide, the
tail. And, by the way, how providential--from the bird student's point
of view--that birds have tails! They can, it is true, be narrowed to the
width of one feather and laid against a convenient twig, but they cannot
be wholly suppressed, nor drawn down out of sight into the nest with the
rest of the body.

When the young blue jays begin to speak for themselves, and their
vigilant protector feels that the precious secret can no longer be kept,
then he arouses the neighborhood with the announcement that here is a
nest he is bound to protect with his life; that he is engaged in
performing his most solemn duty, and will not be disturbed. His air is
that so familiar in bigger folk, of daring the whole world to "knock