Canada Jays – Whiskey Jacks

I just returned from a family vacation to Vermont. One of the highlights for our whole family was an early morning drive to a bog in the northeastern corner of the state. That bog is a great place to look for moose, one of which we saw from the car during the drive. Even more exciting for me, the bog is home for some birds that are usually found much farther north. There were a few rare species we weren’t able to find, like Spruce Grouse and Boreal Chickadee, but we got great looks at a pair of Black-backed Woodpeckers (we found their nest!) and a family of Canada Jays.

Canada Jays are in the same family as Blue Jays, but they’re much more adapted to living in cold climates. They’re remarkably well insulated with their thick, fluffy feathers. The females lay eggs in late winter, many weeks before most other songbirds attempt to nest in Canada. The female jay needs to work hard to keep her eggs warm with temperatures as low as negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers have found that a female Canada Jay will spend 98% of her time incubating eggs, leaving the nest for only a couple minutes every 3 to 4 hours. Males don’t help with incubation. He may bring some food to the female as she sits on the nest, but often only once per day.

During their nesting season, there is not much food to be found. Canada Jays are remarkably good at finding what little food is available. They also have a neat trick to prepare for winter. In spring, summer, and fall, they work hard to find food to store, or “cache” for later. They have evolved to produce large quantities of sticky saliva, which they use to adhere food to the bottoms of branches or under flakes of bark. They need to be careful to hide their food high enough in trees, because several feet of snow accumulates each winter.

We saw only a single juvenile Canada Jay with two adults. Canada Jays often lay 2 to 5 eggs for each nesting attempt. By early June, the most dominant of the juvenile jays will often drive off its siblings, leaving it with all of its parents’ attention. That juvenile will stay with the parents all winter, and may even stick around to help feed next year’s young after they leave the nest. The “orphaned” juveniles that have been driven away often seek out other adult Canada Jays. A pair of jays that was not successful nesting will often adopt an orphaned juvenile, and the three birds will live as a family until next year.

Due to their inquisitive nature and the way they steal food from humans, Canada Jays were often associated with the Algonquian trickster god Wisakedjak. To this day, that association persists in a common nickname for the Canada Jay – the Whiskey Jack. Many Whiskey Jacks have learned to investigate gun shots, in case there is a fresh deer carcass to peck at. They will enter tents or cabins or ride on canoes to see if any food is available to steal. They’ve even been seen plucking bacon out of a pan cooking over a camp fire.