I worked at the Heather Meadows area of Mt. Baker for 15 years. That's the area by the lakes by the upper ski area. The Gray Jays are there all the time and there are many days of the year when there are no visitors to feed them and they stay around and survive on their "natural" food just fine. They did seem to know that hearing the generator start up meant there were people around and they would show up in flocks even though we didn't spend much time actually feeding them. At times we would sit on the porch in the sun to eat lunch and they would land on our heads or shoulders and then hop right on to the plate if we didn't shoo them away.

One thing you might do in the summer is take pictures of the immature birds as it seems there are not too many photos of immature gray jays available.

The most amusing incident for me concerning bird feeding was when we had a couple of gulls fly through one day. This was very unusual at that location. We saw them on the parking lot and went outside to check them out. As soon as they saw us they took off and began to fly away. I made a throwing motion with my arm and they immediately turned around and came back and landed on the parking lot even though I hadn't actually thrown anything. We did then go and get something to feed them long enough to get some pictures. I still don't know what kind of gull they were. I assumed California gulls for a long time but then noticed that in the pictures they had pink feet to go with the red and black marks on their yellow bills. The only other gull I ever saw there was a ring-billed gull on a totally fogged in morning, sitting on the snag that used to be in the pictures of Mt. Shuksan by Picture Lake and is now long gone.


Philip Wegener
407 Sudden Valley
Bellingham, WA 98229
mailto:wegener2511 at msn.com<mailto:wegener2511 at msn.com>