Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest

by George Bird Grinnell

It was quiet here. Now and then a bird’s note sounded in the trees above him, and once he heard the shrill whistle of a mountain woodchuck and always the dull sound of water falling over the cliff. Despite the quiet, there was yet much that was delightful in his surroundings.

As he sat there doing nothing, the forest, which to the casual traveler seems so silent and so destitute of life, began to give out little sounds and to show movements that Jack hardly expected. Down by the stream a friendly little water ouzel came along feeding, and stopping near the place where Jack sat, perched himself on a dry stick, and sat there for a long time, practicing his thrush-like song. He seemed to be a young bird and, though low, his song was very musical. He tried it over and over again, stopping sometimes when he thought he had made a mistake, and beginning anew with great patience and perseverance. He was a humble bit of life as he perched there, clad in quaker gray and hardly to be distinguished from a stub of the dead branch on which he rested, and Jack could not but admire the little fellow and be delighted by his liquid notes.

On one of the trees hung the shoulders of the sheep, which, shining red against the dark green, attracted the notice of a vagrant company of gray jays, which were flitting from point to point among the pines. Jack had seen many of these amusing rascals, sometimes known as meat hawks or camp robbers, and was always ready to admire their astonishing impudence.

A gray jay has little fear of human beings. He is likely to alight within three feet of one’s face, and to wink at one in daring fashion. He will stand on the legs of a deer which is hanging in a tree while you are skinning it, and from his perch will dart down to the ground after every little bit of meat or fat that drops from the knife. One can entice them almost up to his hand by tossing bits of food to them, making each bit fall a little nearer than the last; yet, notwithstanding all their impudence and apparent tameness, they are watchful and well able to take care of themselves. They scan you suspiciously with keen black eyes, and are always on the alert.

A group of these bold fellows darted down from the tree tops, some of them perching on the meat in the tree, but two or three plunging close to the fire, and alighting with an audacious flirt and spreading of the tail, which made Jack feel that the camp belonged rather to the birds than to him, and that he, if he had any modesty at all, ought to go off and leave them to occupy it.

The jays raised themselves to their full height, as if standing on tiptoe, and looked round, and then seeming perfectly satisfied, hopped about and picked up little pieces of bacon, morsels of fat and crumbs of bread. Some of these they ate at once, some they took up and carried off bodily to a neighboring branch, where, holding the food under one foot, they hammered and tore the piece until it was so divided that they could swallow it.

One of the jays got hold of a bone of the sheep to which some flesh was clinging, and as it was too big to carry off, pecked at it until he got a beak full of the food, and then flew off to eat it, but immediately returned for more.

Jack noticed that the jays that were working at the meat hanging in the trees sometimes clung to it, hanging head down, like titmice, which, indeed, they somewhat resembled. They did not seem very good-natured among themselves, and Jack noticed that if two alighted on the same piece of meat, one of them always retired and waited until the other had satisfied himself and gone off. Once or twice there seemed a possibility of an active quarrel between two of them. One of the two would draw himself up very straight indeed, slightly raise the feathers of his head and give a low flute-like whistle, and when the other saw this attitude and heard the warning he at once flew away.

Jack supposed that the jays would eat what they wanted, and then go away, but this was not the case. After satisfying their appetites, they continued their foraging, carrying off their booty and laying it up in secret storehouses on the branches, or in the little festoons of moss that hung from the trees.

Jack noticed that they seemed to store away quite a little bit of food in their throats, and that when they had all they could carry they went off and deposited it, and came back for more. The gray jays were so persistent and such wholesale robbers that Jack contemplated throwing sticks and stones at them to drive they away, but before he had made up his mind to do this another bird appeared, which at once scattered the jays.