Requiem for a Blue Jay

Even seven years out from the Saving Jemima year of 2017,  

the year I looked so hard at blue jays I nearly became one,

I am still looking at jays

 the way jays look at jays, searching their faces for distinguishing marks

Building galleries of dated images, to what end I'm not sure

Except that I need know each one for who it is.

You might not believe I have spent the entire day going through my photos,

matching face to face over the months they've been here

Aging and trying to sex the birds,

so I can recognize each one at a glance.

Hyperfixated, my kids would say.

OK, go ahead, label me, box me up.

I am well aware I'm not like the others.

I need to know more, need to know who.

You never know. Something might happen.

The part of loving blue jays that I don't recommend

is the sudden squawk explosion

the gravelly rasp they give when the hawk dives in

Shuffle of wings and cartwheel motion

as a small band bursts outward

from a sharpshin supernova.

Then, the rhythmic cries, 

strident first, with outrage then

passing through each color: fear to anguish

Into futility, then surrender

Crying, crying still, minute on minute

Unseen, talon-pinned beneath the briars

Slowing, then ceasing

The jay's life ebbing as it's

reduced to simple substance:

feather, meat, and bone.

A friend and neighbor, slowly

torn into small chunks

turned into food

packing the crop of a quick young sharpshin.

At my desk, now watch and wait.

Their daily peanuts sit untouched

The band of seven, too shocked to fly

Too rattled to eat.

I will know the victim only by its absence.

In days to come I'll study every face

Skeetles and Messi

Blobby Blue, Spangles

Taking the grim roll call of my teachers.

This afternoon I'll push through the brambles

edge along the north slope

Where the little blue Piper went down

Looking for the feather splash

For clues amidst strewn wreckage

The scrap of flesh, the drop of blood

And the little black box of knowing.

*Skeetles, 22 Dec. 2024

*Messi, 27 Dec. 2024

*Spangles, 13 Dec. 2024

*Blobby Blue, 7 Dec. 2024 

(Blobby always licks their bill after drinking)

Unidentified, 25 December 2024

*All four jays pictured reported to the yard today, December 27, 2024

Like a Cat in the Woods

March 2, 2020, couldn't be any more different than March 2 of 2019. Last year, today was a Sunday, and Wendy and I were hosting the biggest birthday music party we could humanly pull off, for Bill. We all knew it would be the last birthday he'd have, and we wanted it to be the best one. And it was. Beloved musicians drove and flew from all over and that man played as if he were possessed, all day and into the night. He said it had been the best day of his life. Now, Bill was given to hyperbole, but we knew he meant it, and that it was true. And why not? His favorite friends were there, playing his favorite music, and everybody was freely showing their love for him. He was playing like the devil had gotten into him. And, of course, it had.

He was on fire, inside and out, and it was beautiful and sweet and terrible to see. Music was his reason for living, and man, did he live all that day, that wonderful day. I'll never forget what he said later, recalling that day. "I swear, I could go, and if there was gonna be music, I'd rise up and play another twelve hours. It means that much to me."

Today was different. It was quiet and cool and drizzly and there was nobody here but me and Curtis. I was thinking about him off and on, thinking about his birthday tomorrow, wondering how to mark it.

The cardinals pippering, the doves rocketing, the goldfinches careening, the yard exploding. A dark blue bullet swooped in, doing an elaborate loop-de-loop with a bird practically as large as he. Though their forms were no more than blurs, I knew it had to be a tiny male sharp-shin chasing a mourning dove. They climbed higher and higher, and the dove turned over in flight and stooped toward the ground, and the sharpie threw out one foot and snagged it like a cocklebur snags your sleeve. And they both tumbled to the ground, head over tail, and everything went silent. 

I grabbed my binoculars and my big camera and slipped downstairs and out the sliding door. I peeped over a rise and there he was, glorious, mantling over the captive dove. A full adult male sharp-shinned hawk, a damned rare bird any more. Oh joy. He will eat today. Much as I love mourning doves, having been mama to three, I wanted this hawk to eat today.

He wanted to fly away, but he couldn't, because he had to kill the dove first. I took two shots and retreated the way I'd come, head down, showing him I meant no harm, that I'd leave him in peace to finish the job. No photo was worth spooking him off his hard-won meal. The thing to do in this delicate situation is to get out of there.

Once inside, I raced up three flights of stairs to the birdwatching tower. The windows were streaked with rain, and I had to shoot at a terrible angle through two panes and rain too, but it was worth it to leave the little hawk in peace.

It may look like he's just loitering around, but he's squeezing that dove for all he's worth. Killing  takes more time than you'd think.

As soon as the dove was subdued, the little hawk tried to take off with it. And it was clear that this was not going to happen. A mourning dove weighs around 4.2 oz. A sharp-shinned hawk weighs around 5 oz. FIVE OUNCES. How does it cram so much fire and life into five ounces of flesh, bone, feather and nerve? Barely, that's how. Sharpies are all fire, all nerve.

Time and again the hawk tried to move his prey, and succeded only in making a couple of feet of headway. It wasn't clear the dove was dead yet, anyway.

 Ack. Are the doves' eyes open? Yep. Hard to watch, but watch I must.

It was interesting to see the predator suddenly vulnerable, now re-cast as prey. The sharpie desperately wanted to get into cover with its catch, knowing that he could himself fall prey out in the open. All it would take would be a passing Cooper's hawk, and he could lose both the dove and his life.

It was an impasse. I was settling in to watch him take his meal from the tower window, hoping he could pull it off without being attacked himself.

Suddenly, the sharpie took off, leaving the dove behind. What the heck? I followed him with my lens to the lone Virginia pine in the backyard.

There he sat and craned his neck, looking concerned. Instinct swung my lens back to where the dove lay.

And I saw with unbelieving eyes the tawny brown reason the sharpie had spooked.

The cat approached softly, stalking, unsure that the dove was really dead. Cats are careful. Cats are not rash.

And when it bent to take the bird in its jaws, the dove's wings stretched out in a last convulsion, a farewell to everything. Almost tenderly, the bobcat gathered the bird up.

Every cat owner has seen their pet with this look on its face. This is mine. Nobody had better try to take it from me.

The beautiful thief glanced around, the dove that had seemed so huge and unwieldy to its original captor, now but a trifle in its jaws.

Mixed emotions, the order of the day. I was heartbroken to see the sharp-shin robbed of such a fine meal, a meal for days. And I was absolutely thrilled to see a bobcat in my yard once again. I hadn't seen one in the yard since Curtis came on the scene. I was delighted to think that bobcats still stalked the margins, watched the feeder action. (And I had just been wondering this morning where the Norway rat who'd suddenly shown up had gone to.) I marveled that the cat came in, likely having seen me out in the yard just minutes earlier. And yet it did. I marveled at everything. I wondered who had sent these incredible things to me. The show goes on, and somehow I'd been here for it.

It turned, as cats will, on a soft pivot

and solemnly bore the dove away for good.

The cat simply melted into the woods and vanished. I have gone through my many bobcat photos but I can't say I recognize this animal.

It was just a bobcat, on a cool drizzly day in March, a day that was much different than this day one year ago. A day for reflection, for grief, for missing someone so special.

How I wish he were still here to see this, to see us. I still don't understand why he had to leave.

But he has melted away, like a cat in the rain-wet woods.

The sharp-shin bent to pick the feathers off his feet, wiped his bill on the pine branch, and flew off down the orchard.

He made another pass at the feeders just before it got too dark to see, but he didn't catch anything. 

Avian CSI and My Unique Theories

Yesterday was another crests-up day, all day long. The sharp-shinned hawk made an appearance in late morning, but I knew he'd been hangin' around, because there was nothing happening at the feeders, despite the steadily falling snow.

My photos of the sharpie are all terrible, but it's because he's old and wise and he knows to sit well out of camera range. He's no dummy, and he's a good hunter. I've heard a sudden bird squeal from his favorite part of the north border, and on the day I'm chronicling here (November 21), I saw him make a kill.

The jays were merrily feeding, crests straight up, when he came in from the southwest like a blue bullet, looping up just enough to clear the house, then diving on the feeders. He did a barrel roll which bottomed out right in the middle of the jay flock, and came out with something in his fist. My heart was in my throat but I instantly ascertained that his prey was much too small and brown to be a jay. Besides. He's not after jays. He'd have a terrible time subduing one. He doesn't want a fight. He wants food.

I watched him as he took it into the north border and made a mental note to wait a few hours, then go into the woods to try to find the kill site. I wanted to give him plenty of time to consume the bird. Photographers and birders take note: The last thing you want to do is chase and disturb a hawk that's just caught a bird. You could make him drop it, and that would be a very bad thing to do. It would be a waste of a good meal for a bird who needs it badly. Leave him alone. The only look you'll get is him leaving the bird behind.

Sharp-shins are declining precipitously in the U.S., even as Cooper's hawk populations are burgeoning. Why would that be? Aren't there enough feeder birds to go around? The simplest, most surprising explanation would be that Coops have taken to eating their smaller cousins. Terrible thought, but it appears to be true.  I hate it when nature works like that, but it is what it is. It's called habitat partitioning. And it will force the sharpie to live in places where Cooper's hawks aren't. Feeders, thanks to their unnatural concentration of songbirds, bring the two together. As I think about it, most precipitous declines can be traced to an anthropogenic cause. 

As I pontificate on why there are so few sharp-shinned hawks around, realizing that I'm sewing this mostly out of whole cloth, I'm seeing John Cleese as paleontologist Anne Elk, introducing her groundbreaking new theory about the brontosaurus, stridently stating, "This is my theory. It is mine, and I came up with it. It is an original theory, and it is my theory." 

Many thanks for giving delightful flesh to my hazy memory to thenerdist.com

So I was not about to disturb this accomplished little sharpie at his meal. I waited about four hours, then I went out.

It didn't take long to find the shadow of his lunch. The curious will want to click on and embiggen all these photos.

 

Let's have a closer look at that. 

There were only two scraps of anything resembling bone.

 

Mandible, neatly cleaned. Scoop-shaped, conical. So it was a finch. 

Pinkish-red rump feathers. Dull brown flight feathers. It was a male finch. Purple or house? We have both, and their colors have evolved to be nearly indistinguishable here in the East. When they first arrived, house finches were an easily-separated tomato red, to the purple finch's raspberry wine. You could tell people to distinguish them that way, and I did. No more. They're almost the same color now. There might be some adaptive value to cooler reds in the East. Less need to radiate heat? This is my theory, and it is mine. No one else has come up with it, because the theory is unique, and it is mine. Channeling Anne Elk again. Brain on overdrive today.

The answer to the victim's identity is here, in this photo below. Anyone know why?

 

It was a male house finch, because those three buffy undertail coverts to the lower left have brown streaks on them. There are no brown streaks anywhere on a male purple finch. Case closed. Except for cool leftover bits of info.

 Here are the sharpie's droppings. There are almost always droppings at a kill site. 

 

 You can tell they're hawk droppings because they squirt out in a line. Owls drop a puddle, straight down.

 All this took place just inside the woods. That's our garage there, and the yard.

Sharpie knows where the good food is. 

 

I was a little rattled by the close call. What if he'd grabbed a jay? Telling myself he won't. And when I came out of the woods I found big clumps of rabbit fur.  Aww, no. Please no. I can't lose Half-ear Smalley! He's only five months old!

It didn't look good for Smalley. But I searched and found no blood. Just clumps of torn fur. So maybe he survived whatever had happened to him.

Nov. 21, 2018

I didn't see him for a few days. I figured a coyote had nabbed him.

And then on the morning of Nov. 24, he showed up again. 

 

Whewwwww. It is ever thus with rabbits, eminently edible, dear little creatures that they are. They're always looking over their shoulders, and I am too, on their behalf.

I've since found more such fur clumps, with no blood or bone or sign of major struggle, and I have to conclude that the rabbits are fighting these days. Over what, I don't know. Maybe corn.

Please, Nature Gods, don't take Half-ear Smalley. I need warm furry things around to watch, feed and love, even if I can't touch them.

What Makes a Blue Jay Raise Its Crest?

One thing I have noticed about blue jays, having watched them closely for a year and a half now, is that they almost never raise their crests unless they are agitated, angry or (as in this bird) simply fluffing all their feathers. It's rare enough that I was thrilled to get this photo.

So it amuses me to see artists' depictions of blue jays with their crests invariably, perkily, straight up. They have a crest, the thinking seems to go. So they must keep it up, right? Wrong. Blue jay crests are raised only very rarely, and for specific reasons.

 

 I bought this decorative plate at a consignment store in Hendersonville, NC this April. I'm sort of building a collection of blue jay stuff (in a very desultory way; my collecting gene is weak). Not on purpose, just picking things up as I find them, or as people give them to me. Knowing blue jays as I do, though, I look at it and wonder what those cute babies did to make their mama so mad. I worry that Baby 2 is about to peck the eyes out of drowsy Baby 1. Maybe that's why Baby 1's eyes are shut. Also if I saw a blue jay with underparts that white I'd flip out and name it Glacier and take a million photos of it. Sorry. I've been living among blue jays too long. I've gotten a bit testy.

Now, cardinal crest rules are completely different from jay crest rules. Cardinals raise their crests all the time, and it doesn't necessarily indicate anger or agitation. It can, but they also raise them when they're singing and eating and just looking around being chubbeh, like here. A very roundish cardinal.

I was thinking about how long it had been since I had been able to catch a jay with its crest up when something changed in our yard.  Suddenly everyone was going around with tall crests.

They were flighty and agitated.

Even the hairy woodpecker, usually a mellow bird, had some big hair going on.

This is how birds tell each other that something evil  this way goes.

And this is the cause. On Nov. 17, this adult male sharp-shinned hawk spent most of the day hanging out in the woods just beyond and to the north of the feeders.  If you click on this heavily obstructed photo, you can see the glint in his garnet-red eye.

He normally strafes the feeders several times a day, then disappears into the orchard. I always thrill to see him, even as I worry about my jays. But on this sunny warmish day, he was oddly relaxed, sitting with one foot pulled up into the floof of his belly feathers. Perhaps he had a full crop.

 

All the birds know that as long as he's puffed up and standing on one leg, he's not going to launch an immediate attack. But oh, that eye. You don't want that eye to fix on you, don't want the pupil to draw down to a pinpoint, because you might suddenly become lunch.

So after a period of utter panic and sitting frozen still, they gingerly resume their activity, but they all keep one eye on the hawk the entire time. Hairy Woodpecker is looking directly at him. She keeps her crest fluffed to tell all the other birds to beware.

The jays were almost nonchalant about the hawk. After all, they weigh nearly as much as he does (3 oz to the male sharpie's 3-4 oz). Hard to believe that hawk weighs only that much. A female sharpie can weigh up to 7.7 oz. I can't say I've seen jays virtually ignoring a big female sharpie!

They did, however, pay him the homage of keeping their crests up as long as he was around.

He returned for another camp-out on November  22, one of those dull gray days when not much seems to be happening. And up went the crests again.

It's the birds' nonverbal way of saying danger perches, preening and dozing, in a nearby tree.

When he mounted to the top of an elm, all the jays' alarm bells went off at once.

And when he finally took off to the northwest, a salvo of jeers followed him.

He'd be back, and next time, I'd witness his work.

Yes it is a cliffhanger, but a very small one. I'll be back, too. :)

Painting so hard on the LAST TWO illustrations for Saving Jemima. I made it through the Ecuador trip and Thanksgiving and Liam's coming home, and now I'm back at the drawing table, working with joy and verve again. Unstructured time for composition, thought and drawing...it's a beautiful thing.

I have a list of stuff I have to get back to when those paintings are done. So if you have sent me an email asking about a possible speaking gig, and I haven't replied, please know that there's a stack of email not being ignored, but simply waiting to be answered. First things first. Gotta finish this book!