Evening star., 1946-03-01
This and That
By Charles E. Trace,DeH.

How to have fun with a blue jay Is
told in the following letter from Arling-
ton, Va. The jay is comic in his own
right He is the one bird which seems
to have real sense of humor and even
to enjoy joke on himself.
Our correspondent says:
Il want to tell you about trick
played on blue jay today.
I'VE have family of tame squirrels
that live in little house we put up in
one of the oaks. They feed from our
fingers and will climb up and look in
my sons pockets for peanuts.
We'll, the old jay bird learned that
we put peanuts on the back porch 1--WE
place them there for the squirrels) so
he proceeded to steal a few.
HE would fly down onto the corner
of the garage and look all around, then
swoop in and grab a peanut and fly
away
81 got bright top cut from a soup
can and tied it with 2-foot piece of
strong brown thread to good, we'll
formed peanut and left it on the shelf
on the porch and then got behind the
curtain
Pretty soon along came Mr. Jay and
after the usual accommodating dashed
In and grabbed the peanut and started
away.
When he reached the end of the q
foot thread he almost dropped the nut,
but despite the jerk held on and kept
going until he spied that bright piece of
tin coming along with him, then he let
go in a hurry and went away from
there.
Il would like you to know that I am
one of your regular readers. Having
been raised in small town on the
Texas-Louisiana border, 1 know birds
very well, and while we have many
birds in that section which are never
seen here, there was only one real
stranger to me here when I arrived
decade ago.
He was queer squat ungainly bird
with short tail, sometimes he was
dirty black and sometimes brown I
learned he was foreigner, starting.
Then there was the robin, with
whom I was not so well acquainted,
since he visits down home only in the
cold ugly weather. He never spent the
summer with us.
"All the other birds in this vicinity
were well known to me before I came
Our favorite is, of course, that we'll
known nightingale of America, the
mockingbird.
They are here the whole year
through, and in cold weather they like
our chimney top for perch and some
times late at night we can hear them
sing.
Il feed the birds on the ground south
OF our garage. They never fight much,
except the little snowbirds who, tiny
though they are, often get into scrap.
'The mockingbirds, redbirds, song
sparrows, English sparrows, all eat to-
gether, and the old blue jays swoop
down and grab large piece of bread
and fly away to eat. They don't trust
any one.
Sometimes the bob-white eats there,
too We aren't bothered much with the
starlings, but when they do come we
chase them away.
blue jay this morning.
Yours truly, NJ p"
~
Blue jays are among the most inter-
esting and entertaining birds to watch.
They have peculiarities which set
them apart from every other species.
No other bird, for instance, first
bends it's knees" and figuratively slaps
its thigh before it gives its famous
raucous cry.
No other bird, disdaining song, has SO
many sweet notes and odd utterances,
some Of them scarcely birdlike.
The jay is quite a fellow, a real
American, one of the old horse-and-
buggy days birds who, If he were hui
man, would not look with favor upon
this, our plan age"