When you eat your lunch in the parking lot at Algonquin Park’s Spruce Bog Boardwalk Trail, the gray jays and chickadees are already there waiting. When we were there last weekend, at least three gray jays took turns landing on our hands to snatch pieces of sandwich we were offering them. Black-capped chickadees came freely to our outstretched hands for sunflower seed. I was quite surprised to even see one chickadee fly off with pieces of cheese.
The Spruce Bog Boardwalk is aptly named for it is here where one can often find spruce grouse. We usually find a spruce grouse or two tucked in the spruce boughs but we failed in our attempt this year. At least three boreal chickadees were heard in the Mew Lake Campground. Pine grosbeaks were at the Visitor Centre feeders along with a good sized flock of redpolls. I like Algonquin for these reasons. It is a chance to renew acquaintances with birds we don’t often get down in the Quinte area.
But it was the gray jays that captivated us, seemingly following us wherever we went, always on the search for handouts. But were the gray jays actually eating the items they pilfered from us? For the most part, probably not. At acceptance of our offerings, some would disappear, and not reappear for several moments. The chickadees, on the other hand, consumed the cheese from my hand less than two feet from my face, or pecked away at the sunflower seed in plain view on a limb.
Dan Strickland who has studied gray jays at Algonquin Provincial Park for 30 years says the gray jay gathers and stores food 12 months of the year. Unlike other birds that tend to move out when food becomes scarce, gray jays stay put, preferring to remain in the area where they were hatched. Snow at Algonquin when we were there last weekend was easily 18 inches deep in places, quite unlike the conditions in the immediate Quinte area. Any food sources on the ground were long covered up. However, gray jays have developed the habit of exploiting any food source they can find, and hiding this food in nooks and crannies around the park. Because gray jays don’t move about as do other birds when food becomes scarce, they avoid the hazards of migration, resulting in many individuals living as long as 16 years.
The gray jays we had snatching our sandwiches were quite likely taking this food and salting it away somewhere, to be retrieved later, a habit that this species begins as early as autumn. By April, when food is really in short supply, gray jays are still happily locating their larders and eating heartily long before natural supplies become available once again in the spring. This, in turn, gives the gray jay a head start on the nesting season with the individuals we had coming to our handouts, likely thinking about nest building in the next week or so. With household chores and responsibilities of feeding young over with by late summer, the gray jays can devote more time to gathering food to take them through the following winter.
How gray jays find this food has always been something of a mystery. The food is not stored in one central cache, but rather, tucked in crevices and behind pieces of bark throughout its selected territory. It is amazing to think that a bird that weighs barely 75 grams with a correspondingly tiny brain can possibly remember the thousands of locations where its food has been stored. Yet, it can, and does so quite admirably.
But there are concerns. For the winter caches to be successful, the weather must remain cold to properly refrigerate the caches of meat, sandwich particles and other foods it stores away through the late fall and winter. Statistics show that Algonquin Park is getting warmer and this global warming constitutes fridge failure for the gray jays. Already, half of the nesting areas that Dan was aware of in the park have been abandoned by gray jays.
For many years the gray jay was always known as the Canada jay, and to others, fondly referred to as the whiskey jack. The name change to gray jay occurred more than 30 years ago. Although the highlands of Algonquin Provincial Park represent the southern stronghold of the gray jay, and populations tend to be sedentary, individuals on very rare occasions do make it south as far as the Quinte area. There may come a time when gray jays sprinting to our outstretched hands will become a thing of the past. And that would be indeed sad for the visitors who look forward to the antics of this bird, but even more sad for a bird that has become synonymous with Algonquin Provincial Park
