calmly observant eye on me, then quickly changed to the other, as if to
see if the first had not deceived him. Still I did not move, and he was
plainly puzzled to make me out. He came nearer and nearer, and I moved
only my eyes to keep them on his. All this time he did not utter a
sound, but studied me as closely, and to all appearances as carefully,
as ever I had studied him. Obviously he was in doubt what manner of
creature it was, so like the human race, yet so unaccountably quiet. He
tried to be unconcerned, while still not releasing me from strict
surveillance; he dressed his feathers a little, uttering a soft whisper
to himself, as if he said, "Well, I never!" then looked me over again
more carefully than before. This pantomime went on for half an hour or
more; and no one who had looked for that length of time into the eyes of
a blue jay could doubt his intelligence, or that he had his thoughts and
his well-defined opinions, that he had studied his observer very much as
she had studied him, and that she had not fooled him in the least.

The little boy blue is one of the birds suffering under a bad name whom
I have wished to know better, to see if perchance something might be
done to clear up his reputation a bit. I am not able to say that he
never steals the eggs of other birds, though during nearly a month of
hard work, when, if ever, a few eggs would have been a welcome addition
to his resources, and sparrows were sitting in scores on the place, I
did not see or hear anything of the sort. I have heard of his destroying
the nest, and presumably eating the eggs or young of the English
sparrow, but the hundred or two who raised their broods and squawked
from morning to night in the immediate vicinity of the pine-tree
household never intimated that they were disturbed, and never showed
hostility to their neighbors in blue. Moreover, there is undoubtedly
something to be said on the jay's side. Even if he does indulge in these
little eccentricities, what is he but a "collector"? And though he does
not claim to be working "in the interest of science," which bigger
collectors invariably do, he is working in the interest of life, and
life is more than science. Even a blue jay's life is to him as precious
as ours to us, and who shall say that it is not as useful as many of
ours in the great plan?

The only indications of hostilities that I observed in four weeks' close
study, at the most aggressive time of bird life, nest