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Western Scrub-Jays

It was my daughter who first spotted the nest last spring lodged in the center of a tall pink camellia bush blooming just outside the kitchen window. A pair of lovely blue and gray western scrub-jays were caring for a clutch of eggs, and once alerted, I was delighted to have a ringside seat to their endeavor. I happily climbed a small ladder day after day, several times a day, to view every activity and relish every little change. I was enchanted!

Eventually the jays' sitting and tending resulted in little heads poking upward for food, which both parents dutifully provided. The dark green leaves of the camellia served as good protection from any potential predators, but eventually the day came when the five babies began to explore their environment, moving tentatively out of the nest onto adjoining branches.

Overnight my euphoria turned to edginess. What if they fell? Gradually I began to realize that I had little control over their fate and well-being. Bummer.

One morning I took my usual position at the window over the sink, and saw that nearly all the babies were recklessly bouncing from one branch to the next. Adrenaline swept through me, surging as one adventurous youth landed on an innocent sibling and they both went tumbling to the ground. I rushed outside, horrified. This was a tall bush. The nest was quite high up. I knew it was futile to put them back. They were fledglings now.

I don't know why I thought a fledgling scrub-jay would know how to fly. Over the next few days I learned that they don't. They are most often helplessly on the ground, their parents watching overhead trying to fend off predators, while the young learn to fly to safety.

By now I was fully engaged. I was an auntie at best, and I ran wildly at any cat that dared to cross my property line. Trying desperately to protect the young birds, I put up a mobile puppy fence at one side of the house, hoping it might offer some protection. I proceeded to knock on every door of every nearby house, asking whoever answered to be mindful that baby birds were literally afoot–and if they happened to have cats, would they please keep tabs on them for the next few days to give the babies a fighting chance?

I honestly don't know if this had any effect whatsoever, other than to ensure that most of my neighbors' eyebrows were permanently raised in my direction. I know cats continued to come and go with abandon. No one really seemed to care about the birds.

Eventually the babies disappeared. I had to surrender to the fact that I had no way of knowing who survived and who did not. Fortunately, I was left with some reassuring clues. One is that scrub-jays routinely land on my fence just a few feet from the old nest, begging for the peanuts that I leave on the sidewalk at the foot of the camellia bush. And I often see the birds bathing in the birdbath out front, particularly if the sprinkler is filling the bath; they don't bathe then, they shower.

More convincing is that this spring a male scrub-jay suddenly appeared in the old nest, still nestled untouched high in the budding camellia. He brought with him his mate, but to my disappointment she promptly rejected the site. Instead, they settled on a large tree in the backyard, way up high. I might never have known about it had I not gone out one morning and found a large baby scrub-jay looking up at me from the ground at the base of the tree. I never saw it again. But the parents took all the fledglings that were able to a fig tree and a large quince bush in the far back of the property and there they learned to fly. And that was that. I think they are here to stay.