Called also: WHISKY JACK OR JOHN; MOOSE-BIRD; MEAT BIRD; VENISON
HERON; GREASE-BIRD; CANADIAN CARRION-BIRD; CAMP ROBBER; [GRAY
JAY, AOU 1998]
Length -- 11 to 12 inches. About two inches larger than the
robin.
Male and Female -- Upper p arts gray; darkest on wings and tail;
back of the head and nape of the neck sooty, almost black.
Forehead, throat, and neck white, and a few white tips on wings
and tail. Underneath lighter gray. Tail long. Plumage fluffy.
Range -- Northern parts of the United States and British
Provinces of North America.
Migrations -- Resident where found.
The Canada jay looks like an exaggerated chickadee, and both birds are equally
fond of bitter cold weather, but here the similarity stops short. Where the
chickadee is friendly the jay is impudent and bold; hardly less of a villain
than his blue relative when it comes to marauding other birds' nests and
destroying their young. With all his vices, however, intemperance cannot be
attributed to him, in spite of the name given him by the Adirondack lumbermen
and guides. "Whisky John" is a purely innocent corruption of
"Wis-ka-tjon," as the Indians call this bird that haunts their camps and
familiarly enters their wigwams. The numerous popular names by which the
Canada jays are known are admirably accounted for by Mr. Hardy in a bulletin
issued by the Smithsonian Institution.
"They will enter the tents, and often alight on the bow of a canoe, where the
paddle at every stroke comes within eighteen inches of them. I know nothing
which can be eaten that they will not take, and I had one steal all my
candles, pulling them out endwise, one by one, from a piece of birch bark in
which they were rolled, and another peck a large hole in a keg of castile
soap. A duck which I had picked and laid down for a few minutes, had the
entire breast eaten out by one or more of these birds. I have seen one alight
in the middle of my canoe and peck away at the carcass of a beaver I had
skinned. They often spoil deer saddles by pecking into them near the kidneys.
They do great damage to the trappers by stealing the bait from traps set for
martens and minks and by eating trapped game. They will sit quietly and see
you build a log trap and bait it, and then, almost before your back is turned,
you hear their hateful ca-ca-ca! as they glide down and peer into it. They
will work steadily, carrying off meat and hiding it. I have thrown out pieces,
and watched one to see how much he would carry off. He flew across a wide
stream, and in a short time looked as bloody as a butcher from carrying large
pieces; but his patience held out longer than mine. I think one would work as
long as Mark Twain's California jay did trying to fill a miner's cabin with
acorns through a knot-hole in the root. They are fond of the berries of the
mountain ash, and, in fact, few things come amiss; I believe they do not
possess a single good quality except industry."
One virtue not mentioned by Mr. Hardy is their prudent saving from the summer
surplus to keep the winter storeroom well supplied like a squirrel's. Such
thrift is the more necessary when a clamorous, hungry family of young jays
must be reared while the thermometer is often as low as thirty degrees below
zero at the end of March. How eggs are ever hatched at all in a temperature
calculated to freeze any sitting bird stiff, is one of the mysteries of the
woods. And yet four or five fluffy little jays, that look as if they were
dressed in gray fur, emerge from the eggs before the spring sunshine has
unbound the icy rivers or melted the snowdrifts piled high around the
evergreens.