Whiskeyjack - Encounter with a Canada Jay

Canada Jay in the forest.

I was out on the San Juan National Forest a couple of weeks ago. I was walking through dense Spruce/Fir, following a small group of birds through that stayed just…out…of…view.

The birds would fly down to downed logs, flit around for a while, then move to a new area. I was not having a lot of luck getting photos. Or even figuring out what the birds were, for that matter.

Eventually, I gave up and sat in a small clearing in the forest. I made a whistle out of a blade of grass and blew it a few times, then sat and waited.

A Mule Deer doe came over to me. The screaming sound of the grass blade sounded a bit like a distress call of a fawn, and sometimes Muley does will come in to see if  there is fawn is in trouble. The doe ran away when she realized that this was a false alarm, one involving a photographer.

Then the birds came back. Maybe just because they just happened to be going this way, maybe to see what the noise was.

Ah. The birds were Canada Jays.

One of them stopped flitting around, and started staring at me.

Canada Jay in the tree branches, keeping a careful watch on me.

After a couple of minutes, it flew over to another tree.

Canada Jay flies through the thick tree branches, still keeping an eye on me

Then it started to poke and prod at the lichen-covered branch. I couldn’t see it at the time, but there was a white thing at the base of the branch. I suspect now that the Jay had put “the white thing” there.

Canada Jay studying a lichen covered tree branch. Note the white thing at the base of the tree branch. Photo below has arrow pointing to “the white thing”.

This is the previous image, with a red arrow indicating “the white thing”.

The bird poked at the lichen for a few minutes, then reached over to “the white thing”…

After poking at the lichen and the branch for a few minutes, the Jay picks up “the white thing”.

…and suddenly “the white thing” was gone. A magic trick!

…and suddenly “the white thing” is gone. Jay resumes watching me.

Then we went back to the Jay watching me. Staring. Flying to new branches and trees. Then staring some more.

…and watching me.

Flies to another branch, still watching me.

I’M STILL WATCHING YOU.

Finally the bird stopped, opened its mouth - and “the white thing” reappeared in its mouth. The magician reveals how the trick was done.

Jay brings something up out of its crop…still watching.

Then the bird sat on the branch for a while, working “the white thing” around in its mouth.

It appears to be “the white thing” from the previous photos.

So…what on earth was going on?

I later found a passage on Wikipedia’s Canada Jay page which said that Canada Jays are “scatterhoarders”. The spend the Summer months caching food for the upcoming winter. Here’s the good part:

Any food intended for storage is manipulated in the mouth and formed into a bolus that is coated with sticky saliva, adhering to anything it touches. The bolus is stored in bark crevices, under tufts of lichen, or among conifer needles.

The article also mentioned that the Jays will try not to cache food when in the presence of Stellar’s Jays, who would steal the cached food.

So here’s what I think was happening. I think the Jay had some food that it had found and covered in its sticky saliva. That’s what “the white thing” was. I think it was poking around in the lichen while I was watching it, trying to find a place to hide the food.

The Jay  was watching me intently, probably to see if I was watching. Eventually, it realized that I was indeed watching, and flew away to re-coat the seed with sticky stuff.

After I left, I’ll bet the Jay finished caching its goodies.

Sources:

I read about the caching on Wikipedia’s Gray Jay page.