Canada Jay

by Pam Willison

Perisoreus canadensis was originally named Canada Jay, so it seems appropriate that after being Gray Jay from 1956-2018, the American Ornithological Society changed it back to Canada Jay. They have several popular nicknames: Camp Robber, Venison Hawk, Whiskey Jack, or Lumberjack. Whiskey Jack is said to be a variation of “Wisakedjak”, the name given to a benevolent trickster and cultural hero in Cree, Algonquin, and Menominee cultures, and Camp Robber originated with the Tlingit people of NW North America. 

Probably anyone who has camped within Canada Jay territory has spotted these bold and skilled “camp robbers”. Although often loud and obvious with their chatters, chuckles, whistles, and mimicry, they often glide silently into a campsite and depart with food. Or, beg should their theft be foiled.

Canada Jays are members of the smart and skilled Corvidae family and are a fairly large and stocky songbird. With a wingspan of 18 inches and length of 10-13 inches, they are smaller than most other jays. Their plumage showcases their subtle beauty: gray back, lighter gray underside, mostly white head, black nape, short black beak, dark eyes, black legs, and long gray tail with a lighter tip. They have very thick plumage for insulation, including feather covered nostrils. Their coloration varies somewhat among the nine subspecies.

Canada Jays live year-round on permanent territories in boreal and subalpine forests, preferring black, white, and Engelmann spruce, and jack and lodgepole pine. Range maps confirm that the Canada Jay lives year-round throughout Canada; also, Alaska, very northern parts of the US, and high, timbered areas of the northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. Although not a species of concern, they could be impacted by warming climate.

Survival depends on caching enough food for the long, cold and snowy seasons at the latitudes and elevations they inhabit. As omnivores, they eat a wide variety of food, including arthropods, small mammals and rodents, nestling birds, carrion, insects, fruit and seeds, in addition to robbing traps, begging, and stealing – basically they aren’t picky because it’s a matter of survival. They spend months gathering and caching thousands of pieces of food in various locations (scatterhoarding) within their territory, always weary of thieves like the Stellar’s Jay. Canada Jays wrench, twist, and tug food apart, prepare the food for storage by rolling it in their mouths until thoroughly coated with sticky saliva, and storing it above snowline in branch forks, bark crevices, tufts of lichen, or needle clumps. Cached food is eaten throughout the harsh months, and eventually used to feed nestlings and fledglings. Choice of habitat needs to be adequately cold to successfully store perishable food.

Nesting and raising young are done early to allow time to accumulate the food supply. Pairs mate for life at full maturity (two years) and are monogamous. Then in late February, Mr. Jay selects a nest site on the sunnier side of a tree, near the trunk. He does most of the nest building using twigs, bark, and lichen with insulating layers of tent caterpillar cocoons, and a feather lining. The small nest is about three inches wide and two inches deep to maximize heat retention. A clutch consists of two to five light green-grey spotted eggs. While Mrs. Jay incubates the eggs (18.5-day average) and for several days after hatching, she rarely leaves the nest – it’s too cold to expose the eggs or helpless young! Mr. Jay delivers cached food for Mrs. Jay and the hatchlings. After about 10 days of rapid growth, Mrs. Jay can leave them to help carry food. 

An amazing survival behavior of the Canada Jay is the retention of a helper – the dominant juvenile stays with the adults through the summer, fall, and winter. Can you remember seeing these groups of three Canada Jays? At 55-65 days of maturity and full size, the siblings battle for dominance, and the dominant juvenile stays with the parent birds. The siblings leave the natal territory and are sometimes being adopted as a helper by unsuccessful nesting pairs! The juveniles work with the adult pairs throughout the food caching season to locate and store food, and stay with the adults until driven away during nesting and fledging. Once the hatchlings leave the nest at about 22-24 days (and are too large for the juvenile to eat!), the juvenile is welcomed back to help with foraging and feeding. 

Survival in severe weather conditions explains many of the habits and behaviors of the Canada Jay. These tricksters make good use of their smarts (remember – Corvidae family!) in order to meet the challenges of the harsh boreal and subalpine forests which they inhabit.