r of course.

The Florida jay, a bird of the scrub, is not to be confounded with the
Florida _blue_ jay (a smaller and less conspicuously crested duplicate
of our common Northern bird), to which it bears little resemblance
either in personal appearance or in voice. Seen from behind, its aspect
is peculiarly striking; the head, wings, rump, and tail being dark blue,
with an almost rectangular patch of gray set in the midst. Its beak is
very stout, and its tail very long; and though it would attract
attention anywhere, it is hardly to be called handsome or graceful. Its
notes--such of them as I heard, that is--are mostly guttural, with
little or nothing of the screaming quality which distinguishes the blue
jay's voice. To my ear they were often suggestive of the Northern
shrike.

On the 23d of February I was standing on the rear piazza of one of the
cottages, when a jay flew into the oak and palmetto scrub close by. A
second glance, and I saw that she was busy upon a nest. When she had
gone, I moved nearer, and waited. She did not return, and I descended
the steps and went to the edge of the thicket to inspect her work: a
bulky affair,--nearly done, I thought,--loosely constructed of pretty
large twigs. I had barely returned to the veranda before the bird
appeared again. This time I was in a position to look squarely in upon
her. She had some difficulty in edging her way through the dense bushes
with a long, branching stick in her bill; but she accomplished the feat,
fitted the new material into its place, readjusted the other twigs a bit
here and there, and then, as she rose to depart, she looked me suddenly
in the face and stopped, as much as to say, "Well, well! here's a pretty
go! A man spying upon me!" I wondered whether she would throw up the
work, but in another minute she was back again with another twig. The
nest, I should have said, was about four feet from the ground, and
perhaps twenty feet from the cottage. Four days later, I found her
sitting upon it. She flew off as I came up, and I pushed into the scrub
far enough to thrust my hand into the nest, which, to my disappointment,
was empty. In fact, it was still far from completed; for on the 3d of
March, when I paid it a farewell visit, its owner was still at work
lining it with fine grass. At that time it was a comfortable-looking and
really elaborate structure. Both the birds came to look at me as I stood
on the piazza. They perched together on the top of a