Things were sure hopping around the province this week with rare birds, the highlight of the week though would have been Saturday when a the Pink-footed Goose spotted near the Cormierville wharf in Kent County, the word went out quickly and the group in the Nature Moncton field trip were able to divert course and see the bird before dark. It stayed in the area at least until Wednesday when I had to submit the column, so check around it may still be in the area.

This will be a first Pink-footed Goose for New Brunswick, they breed in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard, one shows up occasionally in North America but until now not in New Brunswick.

Some time last summer I noticed a photo on the Weather Network that was submitted by a subscriber, when I went back a few weeks later it was nowhere to be found. This week I finally tracked down it’s origin. The picture was of two fledgling Peregrine Falcons eating a Ruffed Grouse, even better there is accompanying video that Kevin Snair of Creative Imagery recently uploaded to Birding New Brunswick, (find it under “VIDEO” tab). Warning though, this may not be for everybody, the gruesome twosome have very poor table manners; they look like two teenagers with the munchies and a bucket of the colonel’s finest.

One of the birds I mentioned I was especially looking forward to was the Gray Jay, so far they haven’t made an appearance in our yard and I hadn’t heard of any reported. There was a small group of birders milling around the market talking about all the excitement of the week when a someone who was listening said, “I just want to buy some suet for my Gray Jays.” I was a quite excited to hear they were beginning to appear at feeders. It’s not that they’re rare, but usually someone calls to verify what they are seeing and the comment frequently is that it’s like the pictures in the field guide but it reminds them more of a big chickadee than a jay. It’s always interesting to see a bird this size easily navigate the small-bird-only or up-side-down suet feeders, I know Blue Jays can sometimes, but the result wouldn’t be described as “graceful”, Gray Jays can hang on with the ease of a chickadee or nuthatch.

They are in the same family as crows and jays, but belong to a different group within the Corvidae. Gray Jays are our only Old World jay, which helps explain the difference between them and their cousins. Extremely tame and polite, (except for the lunch stealing) they are welcome visitors in any yard. Once you’ve gotten to know them, you’ll recognize their unique way of gliding from tree to tree until they pull up and land beside you or at your feet, you’ll even recognize the shadow they cast as it passes by, sending you running to the seed bin or freezer for their favourite foods.

In our yard they’d show up in three’s, we’d get a group from the west and a different group from the east, if there wasn’t food supplied on each side of our yard, fights would ensue. They travel in three’s because the dominant juvenile will chase it’s nest mates off and only he (two-thirds of the time it’s male) will accompany the parents throughout the rest of the fall and winter, benefiting from their teaching and protection.

I can’t think of any bird with more colloquial names than the Gray Jay, still known by their former name, Canada Jay, they’re also called moose-bird, camp-robber, camp-bird, meat-bird, gorby, (I think is a New Brunswick thing, when I first heard it after moving here, I just nodded along and kept quiet, not wanting to admit I had absolutely no idea what people were talking about), whiskey-jack (I just learned, from Wiskedjak, Wisekejack or other variations of aboriginal languages, meaning a mischievous transforming spirit who liked to play tricks on people. Making it the only Canadian bird who has a common name with an aboriginal derivation.)

All the other crows and jays show little plumage difference across sex and age, the juvenile Gray Jay however is much darker overall and has a dark gray head and throat, certainly sending birders with less than adequate field guides into a tizzy.

The other corvids have different beak structure with a special flange in the lower jaw to brace it against the scull, when you see a Blue Jay holding a peanut between it’s feet, it’s only pecking only with it’s lower bill.

Gray Jays will eat just about anything a Blue Jay will, I find they don’t have a strong desire for sunflower but will take some if hulled, for some reason they go wild for bread, I save them a couple crusts in the morning, when I go out on the deck and whistle for them, they show up in seconds. I prefer though to feed them something a little more hardy, peanuts, peanut butter suet, plain rendered suet and raw suet seem like favourites and will provide extra calories for winter survival. Left on their own they have a wide variation in diet, insects, spiders berries, seeds, fungi, rodents, eggs, and carrion.

Like other jays the Gray Jay will store food for winter, but they have specialized salivary glands and can coat the food in a mucus making a bolus that it will stick in nooks and crannies throughout it’s winter territory. This mechanism for surviving winter also makes them vulnerable to climate change, they store food in the fridge, if the fridge isn’t cold enough the food will spoil. This is one of the reasons I’m anxiously awaiting Gray Jays in my yard, we didn’t have any last year and this year I’m hearing very little from others. Maybe it’s just me, drop an email if your getting some visits.