The blue jay has not only a whole vocabulary of his own, both in conversation, from twittering to oratory, and in calls from assembly cries and notes of warning to screams of derision and defiance, but he is an imitator in certain lines. He will imitate the red-shouldered hawk and the sparrow hawk and I suspect him of mixing it in conversation with the flicker. Often at this time of year I hear a subdued, rather sweet-voiced murmur in the wood as if a ladies' sewing society was just beginning to get busy pulling out the bastings. I know very well it is a convention composed of blue jays or flickers, but it is not so easy to tell which until I slip up and surprise them at it. The subdued tones of both birds in such conventions assembled are very much alike and I suspect that their polite conversation is in a common language. But I never can prove this, for they do not fraternize. The convention is sure to be of one feather or the other. They do not flock together. That is no doubt just as well, for I have great respect for the flicker. He is a whimsical old codger, very prone to talk to himself and go through strange gymnastics in a rather ridiculous way, but the flicker is honest. He brings up a large family in the strictest probity and I have never known a flicker to do a wrong thing. On the other hand, the blue jay is a thief, a mocker and a murderer. Just now he is living honestly on nuts and wild fruit, taking almost as many acorns as the squirrels and making a great deal of talk about it. You would think him the most open-hearted chap in the world, but if you will watch him carefully in the spring you will learn things which are to his disadvantage. You will likely find him taking a raw egg or two with his breakfast, to the sorrow of some small bird. Later, the fledglings are not safe from him, and if you shake a blue jay up in a bag with a crow and then open the bag, two arrant rogues will fly out, and it is hard telling which will have the other's tail feathers. For all that, I rather like the blue jay. If we are going strictly to condemn all who have a liking for an occasional small hot bird, there will be but few of us left. At this season he is the town crier of the wood, clanging his bell loudly at every wood-road corner and announcing in strident monotones that straw hats are called in and there is an exhibition sale of fall garments at Wood & Field's.