Hello, all.

It's interesting to read all the enthusiasm for the scrub-jay
invasion on tweeters. There is a saying to the effect "be careful,
you may get what you wish for."

Friends of mine in Portland have scrub-jays in their yard, and they
have learned to dislike them fairly vigorously. They are active
birders and bird lovers (I'm protecting their privacy on purpose),
but the scrub-jays have pushed them beyond the pale. The jays take
the eggs and/or young of every open-nesting species that tries to
nest in their yard, and they bully the other birds unmercifully,
often seeming to purposefully (according to my friends, both of whom
have scientific backgrounds) fly in to their feeders just to scatter
all the other birds. I seem to remember the word "terrorists" being
used.

So it may be a mixed blessing when scrub-jays colonize all of the
King County lowlands, which they probably will. I'd love to see one
in my yard, but that is tempered by all the stories I've heard. We
already have a full complement of crows, effective nest robbers that
they are, and adding scrub-jays to the mix may be hard on our local
avifauna. Mike Donahue pointed that Anna's Hummingbirds, those other
California immigrants, "know" scrub-jays in an evolutionary sense,
but our local birds don't.

I can't be too grumpy, however, when I've just returned from a
successful Hawk Owl hunt.

Dennis
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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