Tweets -

Have any of you seen or heard Gray Jay at unusually low elevations
recently?

On August 10th I made a note in my journal, "On one or two of the past
3 or 4 days I've heard the "wheee-ooo" call of a Gray Jay but chose to
dismiss it. This afternoon I repeatedly heard those calls, many times
in sequence, issuing from the upper parts of the tall mature conifers
behind my house."

This morning (the 18th), while sitting out on my back porch for most of
the morning, I occasionally heard one or two birds giving that "wheee-
ooo" call from the conifer stand, and once, briefly, saw what I'm
pretty much certain was a Gray Jay perched for a minute on the end of
an upper branch of a Western Redcedar.

This would be the first year I've seen or heard them here since I moved
here in 1991.

Where I live (160 ft elevation) there's still a fair patch-work of
remnant conifer and swamp forest, about 7 miles due east of the heart
of the Black Hills (Capitol Forest) where there's a small, low-
elevation (1500 - 2500 ft) population of Gray Jay.
Any thoughts?

Doug

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Douglas Canning
Olympia, Wash.
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