Spring arrives shortly, and with it the birds and the bees. But, Rosemary explains how one bird has adapted to nesting in winter months.
The hardy Gray Jay. (Courtesy Living Wilderness)
The very first of our spring migrants will soon arrive to kick off the official start of breeding season 2008. But believe it or not, some of our year-round resident birds are already nesting, and one songbird that lives up north may already be sitting on eggs. But this particular species seems to always do things a bit differently.
Many hikers know the gray jay as an incredibly friendly robin-sized bird. It’ll follow you along the trail and gladly feed on your gorp. These bright-eyed relatives of crows are year-round residents of our most northern forests. And, like their big black cousins, begin their breeding season by early March. But how do gray jays survive a White Mountain winter, never mind nest in one?
Well, they have a unique adaptation — gray jays have a very sticky saliva that allows them to literally glue food to trees. This handy habit helps them survive all winter on food they’ve collected the previous summer and fall. By using this distinctive caching strategy to store food high up in trees, they’ll have access to food no matter what the weather.
Since these birds have to spend a huge amount of time collecting and attaching their winter stores, it makes sense to dedicate the productive summer months to that instead of raising babies. So parent gray jays build deep, well-insulated nests in late winter. They’ve have been known to incubate right through blizzards!
By the time their chicks fledge, the boreal season of bounty has just begun. And then both the young and adult jays get right to work — with no doubt, a certain stick-to-it-ness!
