3. Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis)

Subject: Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis).

Location: Algonquin Provincial Park.

Date: March 2017.

For an Introduction to this series (my Top 20 Nature Photos of 2013-2020) go here.

The Story Behind the Shot: I’ve only visited Algonquin Park in the Winter twice. On this occasion, in March 2017, I was actually searching for this particular bird (one of the rare times that I have a target species in mind, I’ll be recounting another one for my next photo). The Canada Jay had only recently been rebranded as such, the common name used to be the Gray Jay and some people still refer to it as such (after all, common names can sort of be whatever you want them to be). Part of the name-change or name-shift was to do with a campaign by the Canadian Geographic Society to name the Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis) as Canada’s National Bird. For more information about this story, see the Canadian Geographic article here: https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/meet-our-national-bird-gray-jay. Having read up on this story I wanted to encounter this emblem of our country and was able to catch a glimpse of it in the parking lot of the Spruce Bog trail in Algonquin Park.

The Story Behind the Species: The Canada Jay is a permanent resident of cold northern forests across North America (Cadman et. al. 1987). Algonquin Park is at the southern edge of their range in Ontario (Tozer 2012). Canada Jays are able to live and breed in their northern habitats because of their food-storing abilities. They are highly adaptable birds, feeding on a wide variety of food, obtained in a wide variety of ways. The Cornell All About Birds website sums it up like this: they will “snap up flying insects in the air, wade in shallow water to capture invertebrates and amphibians, kill small mammals, raid the nests of other birds” (https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Jay/lifehistory). The food they gather in the summer is cached throughout their territories in preparation for the long winter. This food store allows them to start nesting as early as the end of February in Algonquin Park (Tozer 2012). They prefer to nest in spruce forests, and there is some evidence to suggest that the antibacterial properties of some conifers actually work to preserve the food the jays store in them (Tozer 2012).

Amazingly adaptable, clever and curious birds. I certainly support its status as unofficial National Bird of Canada.

References:

Cadman, M. D., Eagles, P. F. J., and Helleiner, F. M. 1987. Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario.

Tozer, Ron. 2012. Birds of Algonquin Park.

For the previous articles in my Top 20 Nature Photos of 2013-2020 series, see:

–Introduction

-1. The Pale-Painted Sand Wasp (Bembix pallidipicta)

–2. Moose (Alces alces) Family

For more observations in Algonquin Park, see my Algonquin Observations (August 2021) series:

–Part 1: Pog Lake Campground

–Part 2: Opeongo Road

–Part 3: Peck Lake Trail

–Part 4: Spruce Bog Speedrun and the Logging Museum Trail

–Part 5: Spruce Bog: The Reckoning