Excerpt from The Osprey, Vol. 1: An Illustrated Magazine of Popular Ornithology, January, 1902
The deer have long since become a thing of the past, but quail (California Partridge) still manage to hold their own on protected tracts, and an occasional cotton-tail rabbit manages to find a secluded copse of wild blackberry briars where he is safe from roving dogs, and hare or jackrabbit now and then ventures down from the hills. At the present day many species of our flora are but remembrances and only a comparatively small percentage of our avifauna represents the once abundant clans that furnished life and song to our woodlands. In fact, some varieties seldom visit these parts nowadays, but the California Jay is here in goodly numbers; too cheeky to be crowded out. He is now enabled to procure food from man's agency as well as nature's, a greater variety of more tempting morsels as he evidently sagaciously thinks, often building his nest in some vacant lot or safer yet, in some secluded garden where as yet an oak or two have been spared from the woodman's axe, among our population of over 20,000 souls.
In only a few parts of town remain small tracts of oaks and underbrush in something of the original state, and rambling through them early in March we will find the Jays mated, rather unobtrusive and tolerably silent for such noisy birds, now and then uttering a low croak which is either a warning note or an intentional subdued means of communication. Late in March we may observe a bird convey small sticks, but the birds will stop work if aware of being watched. Roughly, in two weeks the nest will be completed, longer if the weather is cold, rainy or windy. Many nests are abandoned before work on the lining is commenced, from, to me, unaccountable reasons. In only one case have I known an old nest to be used for roosting purposes by the mate of the incubating bird. About the 10th of April is the mean time for fresh sets here, and by the 20th every pair should be incubating. Ordinarily five eggs constitute a set, sometimes four eggs, and sets of six are not rare. Mr. H. W. Carriger of Sonoma County, some forty or fifty miles to the north, informed me the birds in his district nearly all laid in March and the sets were mostly of six eggs. The foundation is a bulky affair, composed of a quantity of dead twigs from the live oaks and, being leafless and almost straight, fall readily apart when raised en masse. Then comes the nest proper, of a few coarse rootlets and fibres about the thickness of long horse hair, and lastly the lining, a generous quantity of hair from the tails and manes of cattle and horses, all this well cupped and neatly rounded and capable of being transported intact. The foundation twigs are well built up about the sides of the nest, roughly flushed with the brim.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Osprey, Vol. 1