Subject: scrub jays
Date: Jan 14 16:40:22 2004
From: J Bonham - jvbonham at msn.com


I would like to thank everyone who responded to my message about scrub jays.

While I am an amateur wild bird watcher, I previously spent nearly ten years as the owner of three pet shops. I had macaws, parrots, and cockatoos, as well as the smaller birds that most people wanted. I spent a lot of time with my birds and learned to watch them closely, resulting in several mated pairs.

About seven years ago I was in my first car accident and had to retire on disability. I never considered myself artistic, but decided to try drawing. Since I have won many awards, so I know perspective quite well and can generally eye most things and have the right dimensions pretty accurate.

These jays are really, honestly scrubs, not Stellars, although the largest of them had what I assume from my books to be the brilliant blues of Stellars. They have all the typical markings of scrubs, with the exception of the gray back across their backs in front of, or even including, part of the wing area. They have the typical whitish throat color, the "collar", and the gray stomachs. What is not typical of all my local scrubs is the intense blue, found only in the largest of them, the extreme size, and the lack of territorialism that my local jays amuse themselves with at the feeder. They are also extremely quiet compared to my local jays, and eat with the chickadees without any problems.

Today, as I was expecting, they are gone. I got to see the large, brilliant blue female? ( I know that to be accurate birds generally have to be surgically sexed. ), one last time as she ? came back one last time to collect her stragglers. It was an evening ritual with her ? that every evening at dusk she ? would return, collect any of the flock left still emptying my feeders, and "dive bomb" any reluctant ones until they returned to their evening quarters.

>From my observations, these birds must live on or around Mt. Rainier, as for the last two evenings they have flown east toward Mt. Rainier instead of west toward the wooded area of the country.

I live in Centralia and my yard has become a refuge for many birds, including a bald eagle in the fir trees, a red tail hawk late last fall, and osprey flying overhead. These particular scrub jays have me totally baffled.

If anyone, probably on the west side of Mt. Rainier, ever sees them again, I would really like to know about them.

They gave me eleven days of sheer delight, and while I was hoping they would stay longer, I hope they have a safe trip back home, wherever that may be.

Jan Bonham
Centralia, WA
jvbonham at msn.com


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