That bit is hardly worth a trip!

      While the two "action" birds continued their shuttling operation, the third one kept busy near my feet, picking up the pieces of food that I would drop for it (and also making trips into the forest); all the while keeping a cautious eye on me.

"Touchdown!"
(father)
      

The family
mother & father (right) above,
 daughter below.

Father
     


Father (close-up)
Note colour bands - "WOSLBOYR"

      The other two birds also had coloured leg bands as follows:

 The shy one: GOOLWOSR (Green Over Orange, Left,  White Over Standard metal, Right).

 The third one: YOOLTOSR (Yellow Over Orange, Left,  Turquoise Over Standard metal, Right).

      Here is a summary of the standard colours used for the bands:

 R=Red

 Y= Yellow

 B= Blue

 G= Green

 O= Orange

 P= Purple

 L= Lime (light green)

 T= Teal (light blue)

 W= White

 K= pinK

 S= Standard (Silver metal band with ID number)

SOME FAMILY HISTORY

      I reported the band descriptions to Dan Strickland and he identified the birds while providing some insight into this family:

      The birds that I encountered are referred-to as "the Cameron Lake Road Birds". (I assume that as this road goes for 8 km. and more, this designation might apply to more than one family with their own territories "up the road").

      An interesting point about this family is that the very shy bird that I concluded to be the offspring is actually the mother and she is just a shy individual. As with people, individual Gray Jays show a whole range of individual behaviours.

      The father, WOSLBOYR, was born in 1996 in one "territory" to the north (the "cliff territory") and he was the dominant juvenile there so he survived. After one year he filled a vacancy on this Cameron Lake Road territory and bred when he was two years old.

      The mother, GOOLWOSR, (the shy one) is of unknown age, however she is at least two and a half years old.

      The juvenile, YOOLTOSR, (the one I mistook for the mother) happens to be a female and was the "dominant juvenile" of the three original fledglings of this family in the spring of this year (1998). By June she had kicked her two siblings out of the territory. She will stay with the parents until nesting season (spring 1999) when they will expel her from the territory. By staying with the parents she will have a good chance of surviving, but her nesting will be delayed until the year 2000.

      (If my arithmetic is correct this applies to every "dominant juvenile" that survives with the parents. It will not breed until it is two years old,)

      In most cases the siblings that YOOLTOSR ejected would have died by the fall of this year, however one of the ejected siblings in this family was lucky enough to find a vacancy on a territory up the road and is now the apparent breeding female there. If all goes well she should nest this coming March-April, at one year of age, thus beating out her stronger sister (YOOLTOSR) by a year!

      Near the end of November I paid another visit to the same location and again had a very pleasant visit with the same family along with Chickadees, Blue Jays and a couple of crows. Took a few video camera movies of them. One thing that I found interesting was GOOLWOSR's behaviour with some chunks of food. While on the ground and carrying a large chunk of food she spied a smaller piece on the ground. Realizing that she could not carry both pieces with the larger piece already in her mouth she dropped the large piece, picked up the small piece, and then picked up the large piece again before flying off!

"Wait here, I'll be right back"
(YOOLTOSR)