Bird of the Day - Canada Jay

 

The bird of the day today is the Canada jay.  It is also known as the Perisoreus canadensis, gray jay, whiskey jack, moose bird, and camp robber.  The official common name was Canada jay up until the 1950s when the American Ornithological Union voted to change the name to gray jay.  They further insulted Canada by using the American form of gray.  Recently, they voted to change it back to Canada jay.

Canada Jay (Left) and Blue Jay (Right)

The Canada jay is in the Corvidae family, which includes the jays, magpies, nutcrackers, crows, and ravens.  It is a family of very intelligent birds, and the Canada jay is no exception.  They are nicknamed camp robbers because of their exceptional ability to procure food from people.    Peanuts are one of their favorites, but they will come in for a variety of foods.

I've found that they will swoop down towards people with food, but will waive off instead of landing right away.  Then they sit in a tree and study the person.  If they decide the person is not a threat, they will land on the person's hand, and take the food.

There are also times that they will sneak in and grab food when the person is not paying attention.  I met a person who was trying to put a cracker in their mouth, and it disappeared before it got there.

The Canada jays spend so much time caching food in the winter, that they have historically been able to survive the nesting season without having to do any additional gathering.  Unique among the corvids, they have a saliva that acts like a glue to stick cached foods into great hiding places.

The caching has been a disadvantage in their southern ranges as the climate warms, because a lot of their perishable food has gone bad during nesting season.  For many years, I saw flocks of three birds in the winter (two parents and the dominant offspring), but now I usually only see one or two at a time.  With the food spoilage, not as many young are surviving to maturity.

The range of the Canada jay covers most of Canada and Alaska, the Arrowhead region of Minnesota, the Rocky Mountains, and part of the Pacific Northwest.  There are six subspecies in North America, which differ slightly in markings.  The subspecies in Minnesota is the albescent.