I think it’s a question of habit. In the Great Basin they are mostly a
woodland bird - they don’t have a lot of campsites and homes to steal from !
So they develop more “wild” habits.
Alan Contreras
Eugene, Oregon
acontrer56@xxxxxxxxx
On Jul 16, 2016, at 6:09 PM, Laura Paulson <laura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am finding the discussion of Woodhouse Jay's being "retiring" interesting.
I would not have used that adjective to describe the Scrub Jays that
frequented my former home in the Texas Hill Country. We would often have a
gang of them and they were noisy. We had both Scrub and Blue Jays at our
semi-rural, semi residential feeders. I was told by local birders when I
first moved there that they wouldn't be together, that when Blue Jays moved
into an area it was a sign of increasing urbanization and that Scrub Jays
would move out. This did not prove to be true, at least during the five years
I had property there. We seemed to be in a fringe area where the species
co-existed.
On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Jeff Harding <jeffharding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:jeffharding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
You all had quite a conversation about jays last week, but I was too busy to
respond. I write now just to emphasize how retiring Woodhouse’s Jays are, as
Joel and others have said.
I thought I had seen a Woodhouse’s Jay east of Adel, Lake County May 28,
2007, but I just looked again at the photographs, and it looks more like the
coastal form, just as we see at Picture Rock Pass and here in the Willamette
Valley. Here is a poor photo from that day:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffharding/27729204784/ ;
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffharding/27729204784/>
The blue breast band is distinct, and the undertail coverts are white. It
seemed to me at the time that the habitat was good for the interior form,
across the valley and up into the juniper-clad hills to the east, Greaser
Canyon on the map. Perhaps the fact that the bird is in the open on top of a
tree is significant, because Woodhouse’s Jay is more reticent than that.
Here is a photo of Woodhose’s Jay from southern Nevada July 13, 2013:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffharding/28236134291/in/photolist-K28yZz ;
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffharding/28236134291/in/photolist-K28yZz>
The photo is dark, but field marks are there. The bird was very difficult to
get in the viewfinder at all. They’re retiring; a lot different from our bold
species in Western Oregon.
We spent last week deep in Woodhouse’s Jay country, at The Ghost Ranch, north
of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Birding the whole time, often in good pinyon –
Juniper habitat, we only found Woodhouse’s Jay once at the Ghost Ranch. It
was on the last day when we heard one, possibly more, about 50 yards out in a
small dry drainage. When we walked over, they were not to be seen. Other
birds there were Juniper Titmouse, Cassin’s Kingbird, Gray Vireo, and
Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, among others. We had visited the drainage on other
occasions without detecting the jays. The place was close enough to the
lodging and dining areas, had they been our boisterous coastal-form birds, we
would have heard them daily. On another occasion, away from The Ghost Ranch,
on the Rio Chama, we ran into a small family group of Woodhouse’s Jays. I
tried to photograph them, but they would not cooperate, instead sneaking way
through the scattered pinyon pines and junipers. They didn’t call at all.
Good birding,
Jeff
