Camp Robbers
aka Whisky Jacks, Canada Jays, Gray Jays
They have no fear of Man. They will fly right up to you, perch on the edge of your plate in camp, and eat from it - while you’re eating. They’re one of my favorite birds to see when in the woods.
Their range covers all of Canada from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and the mountains of the US western states.
I was on my way home from the “Return to Gunnison” trip that has been the subject of the previous four posts in this Substack. I stopped at Monarch Pass for a bit of lunch and to rest the motorhome’s engine. The camp robbers found me.
I put out a few tidbits of my lunch for them, and got ready with my camera.
These little guys are difficult to photograph. They move very quickly, and usually all you’ll get is a blur. But on this day, I finally got lucky.
After all those years and dozens to hundreds of blurred shots, I finally got some good, clear, sharp shots of one. This one is the best of the batch.
Some years later, I was being visited by them and crumpled a couple of soda crackers on the picnic table for them. I just sat there with my phone and took a slo-mo phone video of one eating only a foot or so in front of me:
No telephoto is required to get pictures of these cute little guys. They are fearless and will come to you.
That’s all I have in photos for this post. But I do have one more story.
In the late Eighties, I was romancing a woman that I eventually married. We were on a camping trip with our kids, two of hers and two of mine. She had a teenaged son that I have mentioned before here on Substack. The camp robbers found us.
The teenager was trying to make a sandwich. About a half-dozen of the birds were perched in various small trees around him, watching him. They’d been annoying him for some time.
He laid two pieces of bread down on a rock. As he turned to grab the jar of peanut butter, he started to say to his mother, “Mom, don’t let the birds…”
And that was as far as he got. She started making a “yip yip yip” noise as a camp robber swooped down from its tree, picked up one slice of bread in flight, and flew off with it! An entire slice of bread!
I was impressed. The aerodynamic drag from that piece of bread had to be substantial, and yet the bird was able to fly with it. I laughed and laughed and laughed, which didn’t endear me to my new lover’s son: teenaged boys don’t like their mom getting romanced by some man anyway, and here was a strange man laughing at his misfortune. I still laugh when I think about it.
I have more camp robber stories; enough to keep you here all day. Come sit by my campfire some day and I’ll tell you some more of them.