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Updated: May 4, 2025
And at last they began to weep, and I spent my twilight by an open window, wrapped in a shawl, listening to the "Unrivaled one, the hermit-thrush, Solitary, singing in the west," and looking out upon the hills, where I still hoped to find my bluejay. "There's blue jays a-plenty up in the wood lot," said the farmer's boy, hearing me lament my unsuccessful search for that wily bird.
The men were up in the woods, and the shrill scream of the bluejay flashing across the open, the impudent chatter of the red squirrel from the top of the grub camp, and the pert chirp of the whisky-jack, hopping about on the rubbish-heap, with the long, lone cry of the wolf far down the valley, only made the silence felt the more.
Well, I've looked about a bit, and I've seen the bluejay at work.... Oh, hell, I can't talk about this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested, empty-bellied kids that don't even have guts enough left to laugh.... Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside!
And now, having relieved my mind, I'll go on with the bluejay hunt. The next morning it was, for a rarity, fine. I started up the wood road ahead of my guide, so that I might take my climb as easily as such a thing can be taken.
So soon as little folk find their voices, whether their dress be feathers, or furs, or French cambric, they are sure to make themselves heard and seen. One morning, two or three weeks after I had given up the bluejay search, and consoled myself with looking after baby cat-birds and thrushes, I started out as usual for a walk.
I sat on the low-growing limb of a tree, and was rocked by the wind outside. I forgot my object. What did it matter that I should find my bluejay? Was it worth while to go on? Was anything worth while, indeed, except to dream and muse, lulled by the music of the "laughing water"? Ah! if one were a poet! Then the birds came.
And no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book-talk and bristling with metaphor, too just bristling! And as for command of language why YOU never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay.
The jay, having finished the nest to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb and turned his attention to us. He screamed at Laurence, thrusting forward his impudent head; while the poor robbed mother, with lamentable cries, watched him from a safe distance. Full of his cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her. He was more interested in us.
The bluejay, having exhausted his vocabulary of jay-ribaldry, screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate into Flint's ears, shut up his tail like a fan, and darted off, a streak of blue and gray.
Some relation, no doubt, to the bird told of by Mark Twain in his Tramp Abroad. This bluejay has watched the visitors and the chipmunks until he has become extra wise.
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