If taken young it is tamed and taught to speak more easily than the carrion crow.
Corvus Monedula, LINNÆUS; Le Chocas, BUFFON; Die Dohle, BECHSTEIN.
This bird is naturally half tame, and if reared from the nest it will voluntarily remain in the yard with the poultry. It makes its nest in old buildings, houses, castles, towers, and churches: its eggs are green, spotted with dark brown and black. It is not so much to teach it to speak that people like to rear young jack-daws, but to see it go and return at call. Even old ones that are taken in autumn may be accustomed to this, cutting the wings at first, and again in the spring, so that as they grow again the bird learns by degrees to come to a certain call. During winter it will always come into the yard. The size of the jack-daw is that of the pigeon, thirteen or fourteen inches in length. The back of the head is light grey, the rest of the body black. When in winter it eats wild garlic, in the fields it smells very strongly of it, and does not lose the scent till it has been a week in the house.
Corvus glandarius, LINNÆUS; Le Geai, BUFFON; Der Holzeher, BECHSTEIN.
I have often, during my youth, seen this beautiful species of bird among the peasants of Thuringia confined in cages, and taught to speak. It is about the size of the preceding bird. Its black beak is in shape like that of the carrion crow. The feet are brown, with a slight shade of flesh colour. All the smaller feathers are soft and silky. A purple grey is the most predominant colour; the throat is whitish, the eyes are reddish blue, the rump white; the large coverts have the outer side of the feathers ornamented with small but very brilliant bands, alternately bluish white, light blue, and bluish black, which softly blend one into the other, like the colours in the rainbow, and are a great ornament to the bird.
The only difference in the female is that the upper part of the neck is grey, whereas in the male it is much redder, and that colour also extends to the back.
HABITATION.--When wild, the jay frequents woods; above all, those in which there are firs mixed with other trees.
In the house it must be kept in a large cage in the form of a tower, or in any other shape; it is too dirty a bird to be let range at liberty.