(_Perisoreus canadensis_) Crow and Jay family
_Called also_: WHISKY JACK OR JOHN; MOOSE-BIRD; MEAT-BIRD;
VENISON HERON; GREASE-BIRD; CANADIAN CARRION-BIRD; CAMP ROBBER
_Length_--11 to 12 inches. About two inches larger than the robin.
_Male and Female_--Upper parts 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 roof. 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.