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THE BUSY BLUE JAY
BY OLIVE THORNE MILLER (ADAPTED)
One of the most interesting birds who ever lived
in my Bird Room was a blue jay named Jakie.
He was full of business from morning till night,
scarcely ever a moment still.
Poor little fellow! He had been stolen from the
nest before he could fly, and reared in a house,
long before he was given to me. Of course he
could not be set free, for he did not know how to
take care of himself.
Jays are very active birds, and being shut up in
a room, my blue jay had to find things to do, to
keep himself busy. If he had been allowed to
grow up out of doors, he would have found plenty
to do, planting acorns and nuts, nesting, and
bringing up families.
Sometimes the things he did in the house were
what we call mischief because they annoy us, such
as hammering the woodwork to pieces, tearing
bits out of the leaves of books, working holes
in chair seats, or pounding a cardboard box to
pieces. But how is a poor little bird to know what
is mischief?
Many things which Jakie did were very funny.
For instance, he made it his business to clear up
the room. When he had more food than he could
eat at the moment, he did not leave it around, but
put it away carefully,--not in the garbage pail,
for that was not in the room, but in some safe
nook where it did not offend the eye. Sometimes
it was behind the tray in his cage, or among the
books on the shelf. The places he liked best were
about me,--in the fold of a ruffle or the loop of a
bow on my dress, and sometimes in the side of my
slipper. The very choicest place of all was in my
loosely bound hair. That, of course, I could not
allow, and I had to keep very close watch of him,
for fear I might have a bit of bread or meat thrust
among my locks.
In his clearing up he always went carefully over
the floor, picking up pins, or any little thing he
could find, and I often dropped burnt matches,
buttons, and other small things to give him something
to do. These he would pick up and put
nicely away.
Pins Jakie took lengthwise in his beak, and at
first I thought he had swallowed them, till I saw
him hunt up a proper place to hide them. The
place he chose was between the leaves of a book.
He would push a pin far in out of sight, and then
go after another. A match he always tried to put
in a crack, under the baseboard, between the
breadths of matting, or under my rockers. He
first placed it, and then tried to hammer it in out
of sight. He could seldom get it in far enough to
suit him, and this worried him. Then he would
take it out and try another place.
Once the blue jay found a good match, of the
parlor match variety. He put it between the
breadths of matting, and then began to pound on
it as usual. Pretty soon he hit the unburnt end
and it went off with a loud crack, as parlor
matches do. Poor Jakie jumped two feet into the
air, nearly frightened out of his wits; and I was
frightened, too, for I feared he might set the
house on fire.
Often when I got up from my chair a shower of
the bird's playthings would fall from his various
hiding-places about my dress,--nails, matches,
shoe-buttons, bread-crumbs, and other things.
Then he had to begin his work all over again.
Jakie liked a small ball or a marble. His game
was to give it a hard peck and see it roll. If it
rolled away from him, he ran after it and pecked
again; but sometimes it rolled toward him, and
then he bounded into the air as if he thought it
would bite. And what was funny, he was always
offended at this conduct of the ball, and went off
sulky for a while.
He was a timid little fellow. Wind or storm
outside the windows made him wild. He would
fly around the room, squawking at the top of his
voice; and the horrible tin horns the boys liked to
blow at Thanksgiving and Christmas drove him
frantic.
Once I brought a Christmas tree into the room
to please the birds, and all were delighted with it
except my poor little blue jay, who was much
afraid of it. Think of the sadness of a bird being
afraid of a tree!
II
Jakie had decided opinions about people who
came into the room to see me, or to see the birds.
At some persons he would squawk every moment.
Others he saluted with a queer cry like ``Ob-ble!
ob-ble! ob-ble!'' Once when a lady came in with a
baby, he fixed his eyes on that infant with a savage
look as if he would like to peck it, and jumped
back and forth in his cage, panting but perfectly
silent.
Jakie was very devoted to me. He always
greeted me with a low, sweet chatter, with wings
quivering, and, if he were out of the cage, he
would come on the back of my chair and touch
my cheek or lips very gently with his beak, or
offer me a bit of food if he had any; and to me
alone when no one else was near, he sang a low,
exquisite song. I afterwards heard a similar song
sung by a wild blue jay to his mate while she was
sitting, and so I knew that my dear little captive
had given me his sweetest--his love-song.
One of Jakie's amusements was dancing across
the back of a tall chair, taking funny little steps,
coming down hard, ``jouncing'' his body, and
whistling as loud as he could. He would keep up
this funny performance as long as anybody would
stand before him and pretend to dance too.
My jay was fond of a sensation. One of his
dearest bits of fun was to drive the birds into a
panic. This he did by flying furiously around the
room, feathers rustling, and squawking as loud as
he could. He usually managed to fly just over the
head of each bird, and as he came like a catapult,
every one flew before him, so that in a minute the
room was full of birds flying madly about, trying
to get out of his way. This gave him great
pleasure.
Once a grasshopper got into the Bird Room,
probably brought in clinging to some one's dress
in the way grasshoppers do. Jakie was in his cage,
but he noticed the stranger instantly, and I
opened the door for him. He went at once to look
at the grasshopper, and when it hopped he was so
startled that he hopped too. Then he picked the
insect up, but he did not know what to do with it,
so he dropped it again. Again the grasshopper
jumped directly up, and again the jay did the
same. This they did over and over, till every one
was tired laughing at them. It looked as if they
were trying to see who could jump the highest.
There was another bird in the room, however,
who knew what grasshoppers were good for. He
was an orchard oriole, and after looking on awhile,
he came down and carried off the hopper to eat.
The jay did not like to lose his plaything; he ran
after the thief, and stood on the floor giving low
cries and looking on while the oriole on a chair
was eating the dead grasshopper. When the oriole
happened to drop it, Jakie,--who had got a new
idea what to do with grasshoppers,--snatched it
up and carried it under a chair and finished it.
I could tell many more stories about my bird,
but I have told them before in one of my ``grown-up''
books, so I will not repeat them here.
BABES IN THE WOODS
BY JOHN BURROUGHS
One day in early May, Ted and I made an expedition
to the Shattega, a still, dark, deep stream
that loiters silently through the woods not far
from my cabin. As we paddled along, we were on
the alert for any bit of wild life of bird or beast
that might turn up.
There were so many abandoned woodpecker
chambers in the small dead trees as we went along
that I determined to secure the section of a tree
containing a good one to take home and put up
for the bluebirds. ``Why don't the bluebirds occupy
them here?'' inquired Ted. ``Oh,'' I replied,
``blue birds do not come so far into the woods as
this. They prefer nesting-places in the open, and
near human habitations.'' After carefully scrutinizing
several of the trees, we at last saw one that
seemed to fill the bill. It was a small dead tree-
trunk seven or eight inches in diameter, that
leaned out over the water, and from which the top
had been broken. The hole, round and firm, was
ten or twelve feet above us. After considerable
effort I succeeded in breaking the stub off near
the ground, and brought it down into the boat.
``Just the thing,'' I said; ``surely the bluebirds
will prefer this to an artificial box.'' But, lo and
behold, it already had bluebirds in it! We had not
heard a sound or seen a feather till the trunk was
in our hands, when, on peering into the cavity, we
discovered two young bluebirds about half grown.
This was a predicament indeed!
Well, the only thing we could do was to stand
the tree-trunk up again as well as we could, and
as near as we could to where it had stood before.
This was no easy thing. But after a time we had
it fairly well replaced, one end standing in the
mud of the shallow water and the other resting
against a tree. This left the hole to the nest about
ten feet below and to one side of its former position.
Just then we heard the voice of one of the
parent birds, and we quickly paddled to the other
side of the stream, fifty feet away, to watch her
proceedings, saying to each other, ``Too bad! too
bad!'' The mother bird had a large beetle in her
beak. She alighted upon a limb a few feet above
the former site of her nest, looked down upon us,
uttered a note or two, and then dropped down
confidently to the point in the vacant air where
the entrance to her nest had been but a few
moments before. Here she hovered on the wing a
second or two, looking for something that was not
there, and then returned to the perch she had just
left, apparently not a little disturbed. She hammered
the beetle rather excitedly upon the limb
a few times, as if it were in some way at fault,
then dropped down to try for her nest again.
Only vacant air there! She hovers and hovers,
her blue wings flickering in the checkered light;
surely that precious hole MUST be there; but no,
again she is baffled, and again she returns to her
perch, and mauls the poor beetle till it must be
reduced to a pulp. Then she makes a third
attempt, then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth,
till she becomes very much excited. ``What could
have happened? Am I dreaming? Has that beetle
hoodooed me?'' she seems to say, and in her dismay
she lets the bug drop, and looks bewilderedly
about her. Then she flies away through the
woods, calling. ``Going for her mate,'' I said to
Ted. ``She is in deep trouble, and she wants
sympathy and help.''
In a few minutes we heard her mate answer,
and presently the two birds came hurrying to the
spot, both with loaded beaks. They perched upon
the familiar limb above the site of the nest, and
the mate seemed to say, ``My dear, what has
happened to you? I can find that nest.'' And he
dived down, and brought up in the empty air just
as the mother had done. How he winnowed it
with his eager wings! How he seemed to bear on
to that blank space! His mate sat regarding him
intently, confident, I think, that he would find
the clue. But he did not. Baffled and excited, he
returned to the perch beside her. Then she tried
again, then he rushed down once more, then they
both assaulted the place, but it would not give up
its secret. They talked, they encouraged each
other, and they kept up the search, now one, now
the other, now both together. Sometimes they
dropped down to within a few feet of the entrance
to the nest, and we thought they would surely
find it. No, their minds and eyes were intent only
upon that square foot of space where the nest had
been. Soon they withdrew to a large limb many
feet higher up, and seemed to say to themselves,
``Well, it is not there, but it must be here
somewhere; let us look about.'' A few minutes elapsed,
when we saw the mother bird spring from her
perch and go straight as an arrow to the nest. Her
maternal eye had proved the quicker. She had
found her young. Something like reason and
common sense had come to her rescue; she had
taken time to look about, and behold! there was
that precious doorway. She thrust her head into
it, then sent back a call to her mate, then went
farther in, then withdrew. ``Yes, it is true, they
are here, they are here!'' Then she went in again,
gave them the food in her beak, and then gave
place to her mate, who, after similar demonstrations
of joy, also gave them his morsel.
Ted and I breathed freer. A burden had been
taken from our minds and hearts, and we went
cheerfully on our way. We had learned something,
too; we had learned that when in the deep
woods you think of bluebirds, bluebirds may be
nearer you than you think. |
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