Hi Matt H,
You said there are none,
But
I have several recordings I made and put on ebird, of scrubjays in my yard
whisper singing ,
they nest in my yard, I prob heard them sing couple dozen times this past
spring, once I knew what to listen for:
the whisper song is soft and hard to record,
mine only do it from concealed within a shrub :
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S43505680
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S43509831
Also I have twice heard Stellers jay doing it, here is a brief recording of :
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S46120708
Adrian H said he has heard magpies sing, too. I hope to hear one of those in
2019.
Courtney Kelly Jett, Bend, Oregon
Sent from a phone that is all brevity, no wit
Sent from a phone low on wits, high on bits
On Feb 3, 2019, at 10:27 PM, Robert O'Brien <baro@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I first heard this song as a birding kid on the San Francisco peninsula in
the 1950's By then I knew California Jays very well & didn't believe my
ears; then I thought I had made a great discovery. But I did manage to find
reference to in in the meager literature available to me at the local public
library. At that time I spent all my spare time birding, e.g. hours per
every day. I just looked at my bird books of that day and find no mention of
it so I'm not sure where I did find it. Since those glory birding days, I've
heard it very very rarely. But here in Carver at my place Steller's Jays are
the common birds with only occasional scrub jays from the nearby, more
open-county population, usually during nesting when they come to the feeders.
Bob OBrien Carver OR
On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 7:48 PM Matthew G Hunter <matthewghunter@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi Folks,
I thought a few of you might be interested in this...
A little over a week ago, Lisa McMaster from Portland posted on the
Birding Oregon facebook group a cell-phone video of "her" scrubby singing to
her while it was on a bench in her backyard. Lisa says this bird has been
visiting her feeders for at least 9 years, and is the only one that will let
her hand-feed it. And, she says this is the first time she has heard the
bird "sing" to her.
You can see the original Fb post here,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/birdingoregon/permalink/793517527673137/).
With Lisa's permission I have also uploaded the videos to youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm5WwH07NfM and ;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEvuvurL6g. And the sound files were ;
extracted and uploaded to xeno-canto.org here:
https://www.xeno-canto.org/454465, and https://www.xeno-canto.org/454467.
In almost 40 years of birding in Oregon, I have now heard this "song" in
person only about 5 times. Of the 136 audio recordings and 15 videos in
eBird.org, none of them are of the whisper song. Of the 69 recordings in
xeno-canto.org, none are this whisper song. I have yet to see a field guide
mention it (maybe there is one out there?). The Birds of North America
account online (birdsna.org), published only two years ago (2017), has this
under "Song": "Soft, unstructured sequence of melodious notes, duration up
to 5 min. Given principally during courtship displays by both sexes when
birds are close together (< 25 cm), usually initiated by male. Tail fanned,
head moved back and forth in jerky movements. Also occasionally produced by
solitary jay while perched and otherwise inactive (TAL)," but ...the account
cites only the personal observations of one of the five authors (versus some
other population). I'm sure some of you have heard this before, but clearly
it is a rare event to actually witness it.
However, I was surprised to discover that if one searches the internet for
videos of scrub jay song sings or singing, one can find almost a dozen
videos, some taken with cell phones in back yards.
What's going on here? This at first seems like a bit of a contradiction.
Well, based on my own experience, including my fifth hearing of the song
merely 4 days ago, this "song" is very quiet. A few days ago, when I heard
it for the 5th time ever, I nearly passed it off, as I probably have done
dozens of times, because it is so quiet--I barely noticed it from a jay in a
madrone tree at 50 ft--and especially at that distance it just sounds like
some bird(s) mumbling or perhaps leftover sound from something more distant,
and I tend to pass it off. Most of my experiences actually witnessing the
song have been with the bird merely 6-12 feet above me in a small tree. Now,
if you are someone that feeds birds regularly, and you frequently are
"close" to scrub-jays, you might be more likely to witness this song. Some
of the you-tube videos are clearly from peoples' back yards where they feed
birds. The other factor I think is merely the fact that literally millions
of people have cell phones, and many have cameras with video capability, and
as you know, interesting things are recorded and put on the internet these
days that one might go an entire lifetime without witnessing. In this way,
internet sharing of observations has become de facto citizen science.
Thanks to Lisa McMaster for sharing her observation. If you're not familiar
with this song, watch the videos and listen to the sound files linked above
(the sound files are louder and show spectrograms), and if you get a chance,
spend a little close time with your local scrub-jay and see if it might sing
to you.
Listening closely to the sounds and looking at the spectrograms, some of the
sounds seem "original" while some sound like they may be imitations of
something. In the second recording there is a sound that is most definitely
like the dive chirp of the Anna's Hummingbird; however, I can't tell for
sure if it was the jay making that sound or if there was in fact an Anna's
Hummingbird diving in the immediate vicinity. I'm leaning toward the latter.
Discoveries await even among the common birds....
Matt Hunter
Umpqua Basin
