Andy, I tend to agree with your speculations about gray jay
and I like your parallel to North Carolina. Compiling all these
observations will assist in determining to what extent the
gray jay may have declined in our lowlands.

What about over on your side, how often do you find them
below where we consider them common (subalpine fir zone
and eastside western hemlock zone)? Any other comments
on your observations with regard to habitat there would be
welcome.

Chris Chappell

>>> "Andy Stepniewski" <steppie at wolfenet.com> 01/28/98
10:52pm >>>
Tweets,

The very local occurrence of Gray Jays at lowland elevations
in the Pacific
NW may be for the same reason a variety of bird species (N.
Saw-whet-Owl,
Winter Wren, Brown Creeper, Golden-crowned Kinglet,
Black-throated Blue,
Blackburnian and Canada Warblers) all occur well below their
usual limits
(for the southeastern U.S.) in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial
Forest in North
Carolina. "Not only is it the only virgin forest in North
Carolina, it is
one of the few-and the largest-untouched stands in eastern
North America.
It exceeds 3,800 acres and sits within an old-growth
wilderness of over
14,000 acres" (Lee, D. 1997.Joyce Kilmer's Birds: new
thoughts on an
ancient forest. Wildlife in North Carolina Vol. 61, No. 61).

In this article, Lee states the above species occur as low as
2,200' feet
in this forest, yet elsewhere in much of the southeast, they
usually occur
between 4,000 to 6,000.' Lee concludes that "prior to logging
these species
were not restricted to tops of sky islands as they are today.
In the
Southern Appalachians they were probably found in any
number of forest
types, and by occurring as low as 2,000' they tell us that
they were not
always restricted to isolated relict populations but formerly
occurred
throughout the entire mountain chain." Lee concludes about
this forest: "we
were looking at not just a primeval forest; this was intact
stable fauna.
It was a glimpse of what the midland low-elevation faunal
composition of
the Southern Appalachians must have been prior to
European contact."

Were Gray Jays "all-over-the-place" in the ancient forests
that blanketed
the lowlands of the Pacific NW prior to us Europeans arriving
on the scene?

Andy Stepniewski
Wapato WA