Excerpt from The Osprey, Vol. 6: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Popular Ornithology
Most of my observations on this species were made at Alameda, California, which is a sandy peninsula roughly four miles long by a mile wide, bounded on the north by level, dark, loamy or adobe fields, gradually merging into the foothills or Coast Range mountains, and on the remaining three sides by San Francisco Bay, its marshes and tributary sloughs. The peninsula, or city limits, was primevally a forest of stalwart and picturesque live oaks with more or less deviating upper branches toward the rising sun, due to the prevailing winds from the Pacific Ocean. Close to the bay shores the oaks are noticeably scrubby and stunted and possess a greater incline toward the east, the upper branches of some running only in that direction, in such strained fashion that the crowns are almost flat. Cypress, pine and Australian blue gum, (Eucalyptus), have been planted in profusion, but the California Jay is still faithful to the oak of its ancestors, rarely deviating from this custom in nesting. Oaks of younger decades were well intermingled with the deeper rooted, gnarled and lichen-covered trees of more ancient years, while less high, the chaparal brush and wild lupin, often small trees in themselves, furnished many a retreat for deer, rabbits and quail. Poison-oak, somewhat similar to your eastern poison-ivy, grew in patches by itself or found a runway upwards against the rough oak bark, and often a trellis among the upper branches, frequently assuming vigorous proportions. Masses of wild blackberryvines flourished in large patches under and above the oaks, meshing the brush or sending their multitude of runners up the low branches to goodly heights. Wild flowers of various and elegant hues carpeted the natural clearings, from February, when the sun coaxed the more hardy varieties into bloom by his genial rays, until May, when they began to fade and wither away, species by species, as the summer or dry season set in.
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