Canada jay
A fearless, fluffy gray bird that glues thousands of food scraps into tree bark with its own sticky spit and remembers nearly all of them through winter.
Canada jay at a glance
Perisoreus canadensis Perisoreus canadensis is pair-ih-SOR-ee-us kan-uh-DEN-sis
- Type
- Bird · corvid
- Diet
- Omnivore
- Size
- About as long as a pencil and a half (11.5 inches / 29 cm), with a wingspan close to a yardstick (18 inches / 45 cm), and light enough that a whole handful of them would barely tip a kitchen scale (2.5 ounces / 70 grams each).
- Lifespan
- Commonly 8 to 10 years in the wild, with some individuals living well beyond that.
- Conservation
- Least concern
Eats insects, berries, seeds, mushrooms, small vertebrates, carrion, whatever it can find at a picnic table
A Canada jay eats almost anything: insects, berries, seeds, mushrooms, even ticks picked off a moose or scraps left on a plate. Much of what it gathers in summer and fall it doesn't eat right away. Instead it coats each piece in sticky saliva and tucks it into a bark crevice or a clump of lichen, building a stash it lives off all winter.
Should you worry?
None. A Canada jay is bold, not aggressive, sometimes bold enough to land on an open hand or swoop in at a picnic table. It won't hurt anyone, but rangers ask visitors not to feed it, since easy handouts can throw off its own careful, spit-glued caching system.
A gray bird drops out of a subalpine fir at Paradise, lands on an open palm before anyone’s said a word, and lifts a piece of trail mix straight from a hiker’s fingers. Rangers at Mount Rainier and Crater Lake see it often enough to have a name for it: camp robber.
The boldness is real, but it isn’t begging out of hunger. A Canada jay has salivary glands so oversized for a songbird that researchers have compared them to a woodpecker’s, and it uses them constantly, coating insects, berries, and scraps of fat in sticky saliva and gluing each piece into a crack in the bark or a clump of lichen. By the end of fall, a single jay may have hidden thousands of these caches across its own patch of forest, and it finds its way back to nearly all of them by memory alone, not smell.
That stockpile is what lets a pair start nesting in February, weeks before almost any other bird in the same woods, incubating eggs through nights that can still drop well below freezing. A Canada jay that lands on your hand at a picnic table in July is doing the same thing it will be doing at some hidden bark crevice in December: building toward the thousandth cache of the year.
Did you know?
- A Canada jay's spit glands are so much bigger than a typical songbird's that scientists have compared them to a woodpecker's, all so it can coat food in sticky saliva and stick it to a tree.
- Canada jays start nesting as early as February, incubating eggs through freezing nights, months before most birds even pair up, because they're living off food cached the previous summer and fall.
- In 2018 the American Ornithological Society officially changed the bird's name from 'gray jay' back to 'Canada jay,' its older common name.
Common questions
Why do Canada jays nest so early, in the middle of winter?
Because they aren't hunting for fresh food to raise chicks. They're living off thousands of caches of food they hid the previous summer and fall, so they don't have to wait for spring like most birds do.
Are Canada jays dangerous to kids?
No. They're bold, sometimes bold enough to land on a hand or grab food off a plate, but they won't hurt anyone. Rangers just ask that you not feed them, since human food can interfere with their own caching.
Why is it called a 'camp robber'?
Because it will fly right up to a picnic table or campsite and take food if it's left out, without much fear of people at all.
Is a Canada jay the same as a gray jay?
Yes, same bird. It was called the gray jay for decades, but its name was officially changed back to Canada jay in 2018.