In the boreal forests of Canada lives a mischevious little bird. The gray jay is a member of the crow family, and like the other members of its family, it is quite clever. Gray jays learned quickly that human logging camps and canoeists’ campsites often have tasty things to eat, and are quite willing to
In the boreal forests of Canada lives a mischevious little bird. The gray jay is a member of the crow family, and like the other members of its family, it is quite clever. Gray jays learned quickly that human logging camps and canoeists’ campsites often have tasty things to eat, and are quite willing to beg, borrow, or steal anything that interests them.
Its mischievous behaviour earned it an interesting nickname: whiskey-jack. This name comes from an Aboriginal Canadian story of Wiskedjack, a mischevious spirit that could transform into other shapes and play tricks on people.
But one of the gray jay’s most interesting tricks is its use of the forest as a natural refrigerator! Jays would starve in the harsh Canadian winter without saving up food to last through the winter months, but jays feed on any number of things including seeds, berries, eggs, insects, spiders, nestlings, small amphibians or mammals, and even dead moose meat. Imagine the smell if that meat was left for very long!
To keep it f rom spoiling, the jays coat any food they don’t need to eat right away with their saliva, and jam it into a crack in a tree. Then they cover the food store with a piece of bark to hide it, and let the snow do the rest. The temperature outside the tree is nice and cool, and keeps the meat from spoiling over the winter by acting as a natural refrigerator!
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