Gray jay unafraid around people ‘Camp robber’ rep well-earned

The day dawned bright and clear, with a hint of fall’s chill in the air. These conditions were perfect for our group’s hike up to Cranberry Peak. I hoped they would also be perfect for viewing some migrating birds.

Cranberry Peak is located in Stratton and is part of the Bigelow Mountain Range. The trail leading up to its 3,213-foot elevation is shadowed by a mixed deciduous/coniferous forest. Once we attained the ridge, spruce and pine took over, which in turn gave way to bare ledges at the very top.

As it turned out, I saw no migrating birds. Instead I was reacquainted with some of our tough northern residents, which prefer the type of habitat we traveled through. Boreal chickadees caught our attention with their squeaky, plaintive calls; adult juncos, still feeding their voracious fledglings, foraged frantically to fill gaping beaks.

Enjoyable as these birds were, the absolute highlight of the trip was my first meeting with the gray jay.

I had just cleared the tree line when I caught sight of a large gray and white bird. It flew to a small spruce and surveyed our group as we came out into the open. I realized immediately what it was, for although I had never seen the bird, I had read much about it.

The gray jay, or Canada jay as it is also known, has a traditional reputation for being unafraid of humans. Ora Willis Knight, in his 1908 book The Birds of Maine, wrote, “They are among the tamest, most imprudent and unsuspicious birds imaginable.”

This is true especially if they find they can obtain food from us. They have been known to fly into tents and cabins, and alight on canoes to inspect and steal food. In fact, one of their popular nicknames is “camp robber.”

A favorite Canadian naturalist of mine, R.D. Lawrence, recounts in his book, “The Ghost Walker,” that the birds took food from his hands, and even rode around on his shoulders during his tramps through the forest.

Lawrence also writes about the origins of another of the bird’s nicknames: whiskey jack. This, he says, is a corruption of an Algonquin Indian word, wisakedjak, meaning trickster or magician. An appropriate name for a bird, Lawrence concluded, whose young don’t resemble their parents at all and who can survive being born in late winter, when temperatures are still below freezing.

And survive they do. I read of one account of a family of jays that survived a severe late winter snowstorm in Manitoba. Lasting two days, the storm dumped a little more than a foot of snow, kept temperatures between 21 degrees and 29 degrees Fahrenheit, and generated winds up to 52 mph. William J. Walley, who had been studying the family and had banded three of the nestlings, returned some time after the storm to note that at least one of the banded young – then a fledgling – had survived, along with an unbanded juvenile and three adults.

A trait that helps these birds survive severe northern climes is their habit of caching enormous quantities of food; gray jays in Alaska have been observed to cache more than 1,000 food items over a 17-hour period. Bits of carrion, berries, insects – anything the jays can get – are bound up by thick secretions of saliva from their enlarged salivary glands. They then store them at varying distances from the original food source, returning for them during rough weather.

All of these facts made the sighting of the gray jay all the more exciting. Although it did not approach us as I had hoped it would, it stayed within easy view, its stark but beautiful plumage drawing attention to itself.

My friend and fellow hiker Sandy Knox said it all that day when she declared, “A bird is usually just a bird to me, but this time I knew it was something special.”

Chris Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com