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Wearied of the woodchuck, they ranged the bush seeking and finding the nests of bluejays and of woodpeckers, and in a gravel pit those of the sand martens. Joe led them to the haunts of the woodcock, but that shy bird they failed to glimpse.
A jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do maybe better. If a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. Now I'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays." Baker's Bluejay Yarn
"I let go his ear and burst out laughing, the whole scene and his devout aspirations for the decease of the partner of his joys, or rather woes, were so intensely ridiculous. "'No, you old iniquity, I answered; 'I left her in the top of a thorn-tree, screaming like a thousand bluejays. The elephant put her there. "'Alas! alas! he said, 'surely the back of the ox is shaped to the burden.
"Do wolves make food caches?" "Yes, wolves, cougars, weasels, squirrels, bluejays, crows, owls, mice, all do, and all have their own way of marking a place." "Suppose a fox finds a wolf cache, will he steal from it?" "Yes, always. There is no law between fox and wolf. They are always at war with each other. There is law only between fox and fox, or wolf and wolf."
But not every encounter with him, I quickly learned, was a party. One morning Atmananda emerged from his cottage in Stony Brook carrying a thick stack of posters. Bluejays, doves, sparrows, and chickadees flocked around a feeder. Sal, Paul, my brother, and I stood nearby. Atmananda approached, but the little birds remained. "Ellaow," he said in a Cockney accent. "Ellaow," we echoed.
Baker said, that after long and careful observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he: "There's more TO a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and, mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language.
This path led down through a pleasant fringe of beech and birch and maple trees to a beautiful brook, which was easily crossed on stones, then up the bank on the other side into an open pasture with scattering spruce and other trees. Now I began to look for my bluejays. I disturbed the peace of a robin, who scolded me roundly from the top spire of a spruce.
Gray squirrels, sleek and bright-eyed and graceful always, lope over the brown needles, intent upon some urgent business of their own. Noisy little chipmunks sit up and nibble nervously at dainties they have found, and flirt their tails and gossip, and scold the carping bluejays that peer down from overhanging branches.
I can make them turtles, or cute little sea-horses; or I could make them piglets, or rabbits, or guinea-pigs; or, if you like I can make chickens of them, or eagles, or bluejays." "Let them alone!" repeated Ervic. "You're not a very pleasant visitor," laughed Red Reera. "People accuse me of being cross and crabbed and unsociable, and they are quite right.
So the flash of coolness in the air after rain set all the wood folk busy. The squirrels seemed to scold more shrilly and dance along the boughs inspecting the swelling chestnut burrs with a livelier kick than before. About this time, too, the bluejays begin to be prophetic of autumn. Hardly through July and early August has a loud note been heard from these birds.
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