Two Species of Jay, and one Confused Birder
Written on 8/3/2022
It was a warm August day. I say it was warm because it wasn’t hot like it had been. The temperature was in the low 90s versus the near-100-degree temperatures of the week before. I was working in the basement, keeping cool, when I heard the racous laughter of a Pinyon Jay coming from the yard. It had been a few months since I had one come through, so I went upstairs, hoping one had finally accepted my offerings of black oil sunflower seeds at the platform feeders I have hanging out back.
I grabbed my binoculars from the living room and headed to the open back door where I could see my feeders. I immediately noticed that there was a jay atop one of the two trays. I could hear the call of a Pinyon Jay and was ecstatic that they had finally let me feed them. I raised the binoculars to my eyes and saw a Jay with a gray-blue back, a gray chest and throat, and a white eyeline. It was a Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay (formerly Western Scrub-jay for those of you not up to date on your avian nomenclature) on the feeder.
Oddly, I could still hear the very distinct call of a Pinyon Jay. I’m better at IDing birds by sound but I started to wonder if I’m that bad at visual IDs, so bad that I’m misidentifying two very common jays. I set down my binoculars and looked up both species on a field guide app I have on my phone. I was right (I shouldn’t second guess myself). Woodhouse’s have a gray chest and throat, are a duskier shade of blue with a gray cape on their back, a white eyeline, a longer tail, and a much thicker and shorter bill. Pinyon Jays are a much richer shade of blue all over, have a shorter tail, and a long and narrow bill. This was for sure a Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay.
I picked up my binoculars again and noticed that the bird had moved to the other platform. I wanted to verify the Woodhouse’s ID, but this time I looked and saw a very obvious Pinyon Jay. The bird took a few seeds, and flew off, giving the diagnostic call of a Pinyon.
Either there was some sort of shapeshifting going on, or I am becoming one of those quirky old birders whose ID skills are in steep decline.
The feeders hang from the middle of the trunk of a large tree, and the canopy is blocked from view by an awning that covers my porch. For a moment, there were no birds in sight, and then I heard the call of a Pinyon Jay as one dropped down onto the feeder. I kept looking, and this bird’s appearance matched its voice.
I watched the Pinyon pick at seeds for a minute, and then a Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay bombed down on top of it, flushing it off the feeder. Nothing is wrong with my birding ID skills, I was just seeing two different species of bird.
The Pinyon Jay must have been calling from the canopy above, waiting its turn, when I initially saw the Scrub-Jay, and that’s why the call I was hearing and the bird I was seeing weren’t matching up. When I looked away, one species of bird replaced another on the feeder, which added even more to my confusion. Seeing them both at the same time helped clear things up.
It was great to see both species of Jay at my feeders. I had heard and seen them from the yard, but they’d never stopped by. I’m glad they both did at the same time, it made for a bewildering and exciting experience.