HomeMy WebLinkAboutMarch 18, 1962 - The Blue JayThe
Blue
Jay
Exclusive
Sunday
Review
Sketch
by
Dennis Puleston of
Brool haven
Focus on Nature by Paul Stoutenburgh
Webster defines a villain as
follows: "One capable or guilty
of great crime: a
deliberate
scoundrel. "How well this fits our
noisy but beautiful bluejay..
many of
high opinion of him as a welcome
visi- tor to our feeders, most of
us must agree that he is a
villain in every sense of the
word. To start with, he has a
glutton- ous capacity for food and
is never satisfied with one or
two sunflower seeds from our
feeders. It's more like he must havefive, six, seven or eight seeds to
fill his pouch before he takes off, only to hide his loot and return
for another load. Perhaps this
trait of hiding food is a helpful
one in the long run aslik e s,
acorns, beechnuts, etc, and byhidingthemheaccomplishesaneededseeding
program
each year. • In no time at all he
has cleaned our feeder of the
choice seeds, leaving only the crumbsfortheshierbirds. To add insult
to in- jury, when all is gone,
he will actually come
down and
scold in the.,most
like way. It- is well indeedthat thecallsofthebirdsandbeasts
have notbeentranslatedasyetforsurelywewould be shocked tohear his
remarks.
Noisy Alarm
This noisy jay alarms the whole
woods as a slinking cat
or fox enters his domain. On a
quiet winter's day you can. hear the screams and calls for
great distances as he comes upon
a drowsy owl sleeping the day away
in an evergreen thicket. These
calls
are
picked
up from far and near as
the rebel call musters every jay for attack.
Soon the poor owl 'is
besieged by dive bombing tactics and
war hoops loud enough towaketheentirewood. Closer and closertheygetuntiltheowl, completely un-
nerved, gives up his solitude and flies off
with all in . pursuit. Outside of
being a glutton at our feeder,
and one who never seems to be
quiet, (the exception being during nesting
time) the jay has one othertraitthatper- haps puts him
on the
blue —
no black list of all naturalists. This
is the habit of stealing other birds'
eggs or later on kidnapping the young. His repu- tation for this villainous action
is known throughout the land and the otherbirdsknowalltoowelltheresults
when Mr Jay is on the prowl. . I
myself will vouch for h i s
attacks for last year I was
forced to shoot at
one
as
he raided
my martin house. It
had taken me three years to get athrivingcolonyofmartinstotake
quarters in my two -story houseandIwasn't about to losethemtoany-
one. So, when on that morning
I saw a commotion about the house,
I went over to check. A
jay had flown from that general direction
as I approached but not seeing anything
I could not be
sure he wasthecauseof
the great alarm. Knowing his
reputa- tion, however, I made it my
busi- ness to keep
a •
close
watch on the house and the 'following morningIagain. saw the martins
frantic- ally milling about. Ordinarily
dur- ingthe course of
a
day four
or five birds would be
all that would be seen at
one time but not the whole
colony was diving and mill- ing
and calling for help. They did
not seem to have any plan
of attack but-
merely milled
about callinganalarmthatstirred
not only the martins but other birdsaswell. Kidnapper What was going
on
I could
not
tellfromwhereIstood
and so moving to
the
other side of the house I looked up
and there I saw a jay, just
as he flew off with a
martin. That was all I needed
and so I ran to the house to
get
my trusty old "rat" gun and
proceeded to stalk the jay.
When I got close enough I
put the gun to my shoulder and fired.
My only reward was a
few feathers and a half -eaten three day old martin.
Front then on I was on continual guard
this proved unnecessary for the one shot
seemed to keep the j a y'
s away for
the
rest of the demon. The
only other occasion that I witnessed theircrimeswasoncemanyyearsago
when I saw one take the
eggs from a robin'snest. Here again
the
cries
of the robins
brought othersaboutbutfor
some reason, the jay went
about his evil task without too
much interference. Yet even with allthese
black marks against him I
cannot truthfully
dislike the bird, f o r when winter
comes and most have gone south, I
am grateful f o r his call in
the winter wood s. True I
do not think he is wel- coming me. as I enter his domain,
but nevertheless his call
adds cheer
to
the
lifeless woods. Nesting Time
As I mentioned earlier, the jay is noisy
throughout the
year ex cept during the nesting
period. Then he keeps almost completelyoutofsightashismatesitsquietlyonher
nest. I had the pleasure
of photographing the jay some years ago in the top
of an evergreen tree some 25 feetup. It is my belief
evergreens are usually selected by the jay as
they afford
a
more unobserved
approach
to the nest.
Whenever the birdcametofeed
its young it would neverflydirectlyinasa
robin would but could be counted on
to work its way from tree to
tree. Iimb to limb until itfinallypoppedupatthenest. Then the .
how would begin. I almost chuckledoutof
the blind when I saw tIle feeding
procedure. Evidently berries were on t
h e menu but one could
not tell this to see the
adult bird. For, unlike the robin
that carries the worms outside the bill,
the blue j a y carries his
food inside. Like some magical trick
one would see on the stage, a berrywouldpopoutoftheadultbird's
mouth, seemingly from no where, only
to be placed in an open, mouth.
This magical trick seethed almost endless as
each berry popped out andwasputinitsproperplace. NaturePhotographyThecapacitythesebirdsmust
have in their pouch is incredible.
It is this pouch -like affair that
accounts for
carrying away the hoards of
sunflower seeds we men - tioned helve. When the day was over I had
only taken six photo- graphsbuttheymadeoneofthe
nicest series of color and life
one could ask for in nature photo-
graphy. The white and blue mark- ings
of this bird at close hand are
exquisite. When I show these pictures
to my friends I somehow seem
to forget the many villainous acts that
this scoundrel
is so well known for but
then isn't this true of
all life? It's the
good, t h e pleasant, thehappymemoriesthatthehumanmindhasbeendevelopedtorememberanditsthesememoriesthatmostofusthinkofwhen
we think of the blue jay.
FIELD OBSERVATIONS L R Ernest
reports: Mecox — March 4 Killdeer (1)
Wilson's Snipe (4) Marsh Hawk CanvasBack (6)
Southampton — March
4 Short -eared Owl (
4) Shinnecock Hills —
March 5
Woodcock P Stoutenburgh reports:
Greenport — March
10 Continued on
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