By Martin Gibson
I just saw a Stellar’s Jay — a lovely rascal, ocean blue and iridescent with a sweeping black crest — carefully inspecting my paper birch tree’s twigs for a loose one.
Pretty soon, along came a robin, fresh arrived from the south. Robin sat down on the telephone wire and watched in beady-eyed silence for a bit, then started calling, quiet, sharp, hard: Cack, cack, cack. If you don’t go away, I’ll bite!
I guess the war is beginning early this year.
It started, what, five years ago. The Stellar’s Jays lived in a flock, and in March they started screaming and courting. Dad called them Forest Jays: they like thick forest and also our pruned conifers. They’re very smart. We knew some of them as individuals, returning year after year.
We also had robins, those quiet charming innocent little bystanders, nesting in our birch and maple trees.
Robin and jay build similar nests, stick-and-adobe cups lined with soft grass or coiled ponderosa pine needles.
That year, Forest Jay also thought Robin’s sky-blue eggs, a few shades lighter than Forest Jay’s back, were delicious. It’s not uncommon for corvid-family birds to enjoy a little predation, especially of helpless morsels like that.
Possibly Forest Jay regretted it.
The robin family was really, very, extremely ANGRY.
A regular sight that memorable spring: Forest Jay in wild flight, circling tree after tree, screaming mischievous provocation, one or two furious robins in pursuit — and obviously making a sincere attempt to catch up. From 40 feet away I could still hear robin beaks snapping: click, click, click. I believe the robin’s second nest succeeded, but their conflict didn’t end there.
Both birds returned next year to pick up where they left off. We knew they were the same individuals: Scientists who study birdsong know each robin has a unique repertoire of liquid phrases, a personal song only he sings. Both songs and marked individuals have shown they return year after year to the same territories, singing the same songs, and terrifying the same jay colonies.
Every year since, our neighbors go at it — Robin dead serious, defensive, violence in a scarlet waistcoat; Forest Jay flamboyantly provocative, sneaking and seeking and fleeing when caught. A robin never forgives and never forgets, and a jay is always hungry.
Both beasts are so vibrant, blue and red. (And both protected from humans by federal law, just in case any of you are getting misguided ideas about robin protection. They’re already winning, anyway!)
Most years, careless little Forest Jay children and speckled, shy Robin babies both appear somewhere in the neighborhood about June or July. Then the parents turn to stuffing their children’s crops with berries.
Nothing for a human to do but cover my ears, watch the show, and plant lots of native Oregon grape and elderberry so the noisy combatants can keep their energy up.
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