Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/639

Rh Upon my return the following summer the number of jays had increased and the conflict was much less one-sided. In June, 1891, early the first morning after my return again to Burlington, I heard on the lawn the screeching of a hen hawk. The English sparrows shot in terror into the verandas and among the vines upon the house. Upon inquiry, I was told that the hawks had been chasing the sparrows all spring, and was assured by our colored cook that "dis country am coram' to 'struction sub, when de hawks come to town." I had never known of an instance where hawks had entered a town several miles in area, and supposed that they were made so bold on account of the attraction such an abundance of sparrow food afforded. The cry of the hawk, however, seemed shriller and more satanic than any hawk cry I had ever heard before. Indeed, there was a suggestion of a mocking laugh in these hawk screams. I wondered if this change in tone was due to the new environment of the hawk, to the fact that it was dealing with such helpless prey, or whether the cry came from a hawk new to me.

With these questions in mind I watched carefully for days, without even catching a glimpse of the hawks, although they screamed at intervals all day long among the trees. Each time the demonic scream began the sparrows seemed almost paralyzed with terror, and the hens would hustle their broods into the barn or under the shrubbery. One day, while lying in a hammock watching some sparrows devour a fallen apple, I was startled by the screams of a hawk in the tree just above me. Upon looking upward I discovered that my elusive bird was no other than a blue jay. The fallen apple was abandoned by the sparrows in their fright and the jay sought its nest in a tree near by. For several weeks longer the blue jays always concealed themselves in the trees before they gave their adopted yell, but later in the summer they did not even take the precaution of alighting in the trees before screaming, but sat boldly in view upon the fence, screamed while in flight, and even followed the sparrows into their retreat among the vines. In a few instances they destroyed the sparrows' eggs or young.

For a time the ability thus to imitate the hawk seemed to be confined to the blue jays nesting upon this one lawn. Ofttimes these blue jays would rush to the rescue of other blue jays on neighboring lawns. Eventually, however, other blue jays learned the cry, and in the following summer I heard it on the other side of the town some two miles or more away. The second summer after this imitation of the hawk began, other native birds returned in small numbers. The blue jays often made themselves champions of these returned exiles. The other birds, however, soon learned to resist the English sparrow on their own account.