interesting story, russell, or should i call you doctor
doolittle?

anywho, i too have experienced similar friendliness with the gray
jays, which leads me to wondering what the underlying reason is
for gray jay tameness. this lack of fear of larger animals is
fairly common among island species where they are rarely, if ever,
preyed upon, however, gray jays don't fall into this category at
all. is it the result of limited food resources combined with
nest helpers? or ... ?

so, what gives? why are they so tame? any ideas?

regards,

Deborah Wisti-Peterson, PhD Candidate nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
Love the creator? Then protect the creation.

On Mon, 13 May 2002, Russell Rogers wrote:

> Just about everyone, birder and non-birder alike, has experianced just
> how tame Gray Jays can be. If you have ever had a picnic lunch at Mt
> Rainier you surely had to gaurd you PB&J with one hand while eating it
> with the other. Well, what happend to me on Tuesday (5/7) was just silly.
>
> After work, I thought that I would drive to the top of Mount Walker to
> check out the view. At the first (only) over look on the way up. I
> stopped and got out of the car. In the tree and on the ground in front
> of me were 12-15 Gray Jays. They hopped around on the ground 4-5 feet in
> front of me. One of them made a strange alarm call and they all flew up
> into the tree. After a few monments of them looking at me and me looking
> at them, I had a strange notion to hold my arm out to the side, just to
> see if they would move or do something. Much to my suprise, one flew
> over and landed on my index finger. After seeing this, three of his
> buddies did like wise and flew over and landed on my arm. Thinking that
> was pretty neat, I held out my other arm. Four more jays few over and
> landed on that arm. A ninth bird, few over and landed on my head. These
> birds did not make a sound or do any thing but quitely sitting on my
> arms and head. I did not lure them over with food, just a nice place to
> sit.
>
> I held my arms up as long as I could. As lowered my arms and the birds
> flew back to the tree and resumed looking at me. The next day, I dragged
> my 3 year old daughter up the mountian to see I the birds would do it
> again, but, as you might guess, I could not find any jays at all.
>
> Russell
>
>