There is nothing really “the latest” about Steller’s jays. It’s the same old but at the same time not-so-boring story. They seem to be always looking for something to eat. With them, it’s a full-time business, which is also the main business of most other birds, excepting some birds, where, temporarily, the mate feeds its partner who is sitting on a nest.
It seems unlikely that the Steller’s jay got its name from some of its behaviours, which in part, among humans — at least, most humans — would be unthinkable. Rather, this jay of our mountain forests was likely named the provincial bird because it is widespread over the province and is the bird most people are most familiar with. It often gets dubbed “blue jay” because of its beautiful dark blue coloring. But the blending into black, at the “shoulders” and on to the top of the crested head, is almost as striking as the blue.
Prairie folk will call foul when they hear the name of their Alberta blue jay applied to a totally different bird. The blue jay, in its lighter blue coat, mellowed by a white breast and some white wing markings, is found across Canada all the way to the Maritimes, and westward is occasionally found nesting in isolated pockets west of the Rockies and in communities in the Kootenay River valleys. It is more plentiful here in the Creston Valley, during autumn, winter and spring, but certainly not as plentiful as our provincial bird, the Steller’s jay.
The Steller’s jay and the blue jay both have vegetable-based menus, but also scavenge. In autumn they feast on acorns, hazelnuts, filberts and wheat, and cracked corn handouts from bird feeding people. But the shady side of their lifestyle is exposed when you catch them looking for an opportune moment to snitch an egg or naked baby robin from a nest. Often though, a parent robin will respond to a sneaky jay with a lot of bill snapping, jabbing and vocal defamation, to which the cowardly jay erratically flits, this way and that, through the branches, getting out of the danger zone, trying to escape that pointed beak. I have never yet seen a robin, on the spot, mortally wound a Steller’s jay.
Although the meadowlark is distant kin to the Steller’s jay, the latter certainly isn’t a bird of fields or of prairie grasslands. Neither is the crestless gray jay, also known as Canada jay, camp robber. moose bird and whisky jack. Steller’s jays are truly forest birds, not just any forest, but of evergreen or coniferous forests. Where you have evergreen forests it seems you have Steller’s jays. Their whole life style is integrated with coniferous trees. They feed, seek shelter, nest, raise their young and secret themselves in and around coniferous trees. During autumn they even consume stinkbugs that seem to hang around cedar trees; hence the name, cedar bug.
Most land birds or perching birds, including Steller’s jays, become quite secretive during late July and early August. You may remember not seeing any Steller’s jays or robins and a few other birds during that time. It is not uncommon knowledge that birds moult, and that’s what starts to happen in mid July. It’s a time to address the matter of dress. They don’t become totally featherless or flightless during the moulting time, but they do have enough feathers missing to make flight a bit weak. So they secret themselves for their own protection. So that is why one may not see some birds for a while in mid-summer as they are donning their winter coats.
Steller’s jays appear quite flighty, skittish, nervous and jumpy. And, at times, they are also noisy, squawking over the slightest disturbance. I have seen a chickadee fly to a jay-occupied feeder and fly away, startling the jay to the point it flies into a nearby tree, leaving the feeder open to another jay. A jay will often land on the metal roof of a feeder and totally lose its balance, flying awkwardly to the nearest tree and scolding me as if I were to blame.
Now for food they just don’t grab anything at first sight. Once I placed a dead mouse on the ground in the feeder area. A jay saw it and quickly inspected it from about two feet away and took off frantically for a nearby tree. Then it came back and hopped around the mouse, only to fly away again. After repeated performances, it approached a little closer, jumping back each time with a flutter of wings. Finally, it got up enough nerve to grab the mouse, only to drop it immediately. After 10 minutes and much deliberation, it grabbed the mouse and took it away.
However, the Steller’s jay has remained B.C.’s provincial bird in spite of its dark side. Like the gray jay, the Steller’s jay, at lower elevations, is a familiar sight out there in campsites and on forest trails and at many bird feeders. With them around, one can dispense with an alarm clock as they will wake you up with their raucous calls, especially when the feeder is empty, or wake you up on a spring morning with cat-like sounds and soft whistles and peeps.
Ed McMackin is a biologist by profession but a naturalist and hiker by nature. He can be reached at 250-866-5747.
