Some birds—in particular jays and
magpies—can be buttholes.
Once, as I stood at my bay window, I
observed a doe mule deer strutting across the prairie in front of my house. The deer suddenly stopped cold as I
watched. She tilted her ears forward
peering off in the distance. Following
her gaze, I spotted a magpie flying across the prairie at deer level, aiming
directly toward the doe. Just to be
mean, the magpie held course. The deer was
forced to quite literally drop to the ground and allow the magpie to swoosh directly
overtop her.
The magpie buzzed that deer simply to
be naughty.
For a couple years I kept bird feeders
at my house. The feeders quickly
attracted crossbills, goldfinch, pine siskin, western tanager, chickadees, and
a host of other birds.
I very much enjoyed the birds. The chickadees were quite friendly. I soon had those eating seeds from my
hand. Sometimes, they would follow me
from tree to tree as I walked among the scattered pines below my house.
I would still feed the birds today,
but for pinion jays. Pinion jays, for
those unfamiliar, are robin-sized and powder blue. They are quite bold. Pinion jays travel in marauding hordes, squawking like crows the whole time. Once the jays
found my feeders, they set upon them every morning and every evening. They came in like a bunch of rowdy teenage
boys on a sugar high. They squabbled at
the feeders and set them to swinging wildly.
They chased each other about.
They spilled all of the seeds to the ground. At times, more than fifty jays would crash
against my naturally landscaped yard and stay until the feeders were empty.
So much for feeding the songbirds.
Yesterday, I witnessed another incident
of jays being mean. While at my cabin in
the dense woods at the base of the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, a
flash of motion caught my eye. A Steller’s jay vaulted into the thick boughs of a fir tree just outside the windows of my
cabin. The boughs were heavily festooned
with old man’s beard.
A great deal on commotion occurred within
the branches of the tree. Pretty soon, a
camp robber (grey jay) popped out of the branches and flapped off to another
tree. A second later, a chickadee
fluttered free and ascended to higher branches.
Immediately following that, a squirrel ejected from the boughs and ran
down the base of the tree to take shelter in flush of fall colors in the
understory.
I have no idea what that mixed crew
was doing in the tree. But once the
Steller’s jay had forced the other critters from the tree, it hopped around
among the branches for a few seconds in something equivalent to a victory lap and then flew off—apparently sated that the crew was broken up.
--Mitchell Hegman
PHOTO: Stellar's Jay (Wikipedia)