Identifier: handbookofbirds00bail (find matches)
Title: Handbook of birds of the western United States, including the great plains, great basin, Pacific slope, and lower Rio Grande valley
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Bailey, Florence Merriam, b. 1863
Subjects: Birds -- West (U.S.)
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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shes, made of twigs, moss, and dry grass, ce-mented with mud and lined with fine roots. Fggs: 3 to 5, pale bluishgreen, spotted or blotched over whole surface with brown and lavender,thickest about the larger end. Food. — In winter largely pine seeds, though almost anything is eaten. There are many handsome blue-jays, but stelleri in its numerousforms, with its blue body and high crest, is one of the lords of itsrace, fittingly associated with the noblest forests of the west. The Steller jay (stelleri) may be found at Cloud Cap Inn on Mt.Hood, feeding with the Clark crows and Oregon jays, and gives atouch of color to the solemn redwood forests of California as wellas the dark, jungle-like woods of the Puget Sound country. Theblue-fronted (stelleri frontalis) enlivens the forests of the Sierra,while the long-crested (stelleri diademata) lives in the southernRocky Mountains, wandering about in the mountain ranges of NewMexico and the pine forests of Arizona. At Cloudcroft, New Mexico,
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LONG-CRESTED JAY CROWS, JAYS, MAGPIES, ETC. 273 it gleans from abandoned camps, and in Arizona, though residentup to 10,000 feet, is often seen on the high rail fences built to keeprange cattle within bounds. Chack-ah, chack-ah, chack-ah, chack, the jay squalls, jerking histail and dashing about, soaring down with short wings wide-spread,lighting on the side of a tree to inspect the cracks in the bark, ordropping to the ground to hunt for fallen mast. In flight the crest is sometimes lowered almost to the horizontal,but, as a small Arizona observer noted, when they holler theystick that right straight up. This holleringincludes a squealwhich is so close to that of the red-tailed hawk as to be a good testto the ear of the observer. 478a C. s. frontalis (Ridgw.). Blue-fronted Jay.i ^Idults. — Fore parts of body brownish slate, with blue tinge to crest andblue streaks on forehead; wings and tail dark blue, barred ; rump andunder parts dull turquoise. Length: 11.75-13.00, wing 5.50-6.10

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