Oaks are favourites with rooks and wood-pigeons; blackbirds whistle in them in spring; if there is a pheasant about in autumn he is sure to come under the oak; jays visit them.
Doves cooed, blackbirds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the little copse hard by.
Jays screech in the trees of the lane almost all the year round, though more frequently in spring and autumn, but I rarely walked here without seeing or hearing one.
Jays often come, magpies more rarely, to the copse; as for the lesser birds they all visit it.
This led me to think that the jayswere scolding the deer, so I cautiously advanced a few steps down the hill, expecting every moment to see the deer.
The deer had lain down close to the log, and had I taken a few more steps in the direction I was going instead of giving attention to the jays I would have seen the deer and made my word good the first time.
I would have got a shot at the deer if my attention had not been called in the wrong direction by the chirping of several blue jays which I thought were excited over the presence of the white deer.
I was working the trail to the best of my ability and knew that I was close to the game, when my attention was drawn by the chirping of those blue jayswhich were down the side of a hill.
One December morning a troop of jays discovered a little screech owl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree near my house.
The bluebirds were cautious and hovered about uttering their peculiar twittering calls; but the jays were bolder and took turns looking in at the cavity, and deriding the poor, shrinking owl.
At any rate, the bluebirds joined the jays in calling the attention of all whom it might concern to the fact that a culprit of some sort was hiding from the light of day in the old apple-tree.
Jays shot through the leafless woods shouting their raucous call; crows cawed in the distance; close at hand, squirrels chattered and scolded at her from the trees as she passed under the stark, bare branches.
And Neale, when he was at hand, hung pieces of fat and suet in the trees for the jays and shrikes, and other of the "meat-eaters.
It was a surprise to find a family of full-fledged blue jays--a surprise, because the jays had been terrorizing the small birds of the neighborhood till it seemed strange to think they had any family life themselves.
Its dead upper branches offered the bee-birds and woodpeckers an unobstructed view of passing insects, and gave the jays and flickers a chance to overlook the brush, and take their bearings.
I was walking by the same place, on April 24, when there was suddenly a tremendous screaming and threatening, and, glancing over the fields bordering on the Waffrons, there were six jays fighting.
There were three jays together in a field by the Ewell road on May 1.
Indeed there are, or have been, systematists who would elevate the jays to the rank of a family Garrulidae--a proceeding which seems unnecessary.
Leaving the true jays of the genus Garrulus, it is expedient next to consider those of a group named, in 1831, Perisoreus by Prince C.
The birds known as blue jays in India and Africa are rollers (q.
In structure the jays are not readily differentiated from the pies; but in habit they are much more arboreal, delighting in thick coverts, seldom appearing in the open, and seeking their food on or under trees.
From April to September, the breeding and moulting season, the blue jays are almost silent, only sallying forth from the woods to pillage and devour the young and eggs of their more peaceful neighbors.
Such thrift is the more necessary when a clamorous, hungry family of young jays must be reared while the thermometer is often as low as thirty degrees below zero at the end of March.
The numerous popular names by which the Canada jays are known are admirably accounted for by Mr. Hardy in a bulletin issued by the Smithsonian Institution.
Family Corvidae: CROWS AND JAYS The crows are large black birds, walkers, with stout feet adapted for the purpose.
Jays stopped spying on the squirrels--to see and remember where their winter stores were hidden--and lingered near me, whistling their curiosity at the silent man below.
The woods were all still after that; jays and squirrels seemed appalled at the tragedy, and avoided me as if I were responsible for the still little body under the hemlock tips.
Then a terrible scolding began, a scolding that was broken short off when a distant screaming ofjays came floating through the woods.
None but jays gave any heed to the five grim corpses swinging by their necks over the deadly hedge, and to them it was only a new sensation.
Wolves had not yet discovered this feast, but a number of Rocky Mountain jays were there.
There were flocks of grouse and robins, numerous jays and camp-birds; and noisiest and liveliest of all were the Clarke crows.
Over these the jays and magpies squabbled all day.
When a pair of blue jays first takes up its quarters in the hotel a great secret is made of the fact.
When there are both green parrots and blue jays in the hotel it becomes a veritable bear-garden, resembling the hotels in Douglas, a town of the Isle of Man.
It was safe from the other jays if not from the inquisitive redheaded woodpecker who lived only a few branches away.
But jays are jays, and it were unfair to demand from them a standard of conduct that even human beings, with all their centuries of moral education, find it hard to apply.
One pleasant afternoon, while I was breathlessly pursuing the phantom of an idea through the syntactical mazes of a freshman theme, I became aware of the sharp screaming of a pair of jays directly beneath my open window.
And those jays that murder are censurable chiefly in this: they have learned so little from humanity's civilized forbearance.
What Ursa Major thus profoundly observes of mankind, from China to Peru, might be applied with special force to the blue jay, at least to those jays that come into the world.
Are there not, then, three righteous jays in all Israel?
A cottontail waved its beacon for a minute before him, then darted into the underbrush; the mountain jays called out a wailing cry; and the flicker clucked above.
The mountainjays flew round the pines before them as they climbed; an eagle swung in circles, watching keenly; while, close at hand, the squirrels dropped their cones to spring behind the trunks and chatter challenge.
The blue jays make good to my ear what they deny my eye.
The blue jays are as satisfied as the designer with the chimney, because the horizontal portion forms a shelf upon which they can lay their eggs.
Like the young couples that moon about Hyde Park on Sundays, blue jays do not mind spooning in public.
Fortunately for those blue jays I am not an egg collector.
What curious notes our blue jays have--a creaking, wheedling, rasping medley of sounds coming through the leafless branches.
A single pair of blue jays nest in the Park, but the English starling occupies every box which is put up and bids fair to be as great or a greater nuisance than the sparrow.
Although not by any means a rare bird, with us jaysare shy and wary.
Bright colours are still scarce among our birds, but another blue form may occasionally pass us, for blue jays are more noticeable now than at any other time of the year.
He must have his liberty in the woods and a company of his fellow-jays to exhibit his full lustre.
Out of the cages, jays make charming and beautiful pets, and some who have kept them have assured me that they are not mischievous birds.
An hour or so after daylight four or five mountain jays came to the cabin for their breakfast, flitting to the ground and greedily devouring such tidbits as they could find.
There are other jays in the Rockies that deserve attention.
A pretty picture is one of these jays mounting from branch to branch around the stem of a pine tree, from the lower limbs to the top, as if he were ascending a spiral staircase.
There was an entire family of jays in the ravine, the elders feeding their strapping youngsters in the customary manner.
The long-crested jays have a wide range among the mountains, breeding from the base of the foothills to the timber-line, although their nests are not commonly found below an altitude of seven thousand feet.
Clark's crows and the mountain jayswere abundant on the acclivities.
I crept out of bed and climbed far up one of the mountain sides--this was before the jayscame to the cabin.
On reaching Colorado one is surprised to find none of our common blue jays which are so abundant in the Eastern and Middle States.
Blue jays screamed indignantly from the mountain-side, and squirrels barked their protest at the inroads made upon their winter stores.
A colony of jays would soon destroy all the tent-caterpillars on your place, and many other pests.
The jays were always with us, were petted and as they became friendly and tame, naturally we were much attached to them.
The limb of a tree growing very close to a back veranda had been sawed off and a board nailed on the top forming a table, where we daily laid crumbs and a number of jays as regularly came after them.
The jays had a nest in a crab apple tree, a cat bird nested in a vine close to the house, a robin came familiarly to one of the veranda pillars in front of the house and built her solid nest of mud and grass.
He could see jays settling on the tents, and woodpeckers tapping to see if they had come to the right place, and on he ran till he came to the garden door.
All the summer birds had gone already; but a few red-headed woodpeckers were still tapping decayed tree trunks; and numerous jays made the woodland resound to their varied outcries, first shrill and obstreperous, then plaintive.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "jays" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
