Attack of the Steller's Jay

This morning we came downstairs and in our "breezeway" there was a large Steller's Jay. The Jay came in through our *dog door* and was trapped in the small room. There is only one window and it was covered, so he was just standing there on the railing.

We opened the door to the room, and there he was hopping back and forth on the railing, looking at us with that "don't mess with me" eye. It startled the crap out of us.

This is the bird that regularly terrorizes our cat out in the back yard. I have a strange feeling that he chased our cat through our dog door.

We had to go around back and open the back door from the outside, and he promptly flew out. Lucky our breezeway door had been shut, he might have killed us in our sleep. Or at least made a mess in the house.

He is clearly a very smart bird, as he pooped on my wife's Denver Broncos hat that was there...

And our cat is still frazzled.

Comments

Pierce Brown said…

go denver

11:06 AM

Anonymous said…

Is a Steller's Jay the same thing as a Scrub Jay?

11:37 AM

Anonymous said…

Dear Kenny,

A Stellar's Jay is NOT the same as a Scrub Jay...two different species that look & sound very different. Either one could be found terrorizing a cat and pooping on a Denver Bronco hat, though (gotta say I agree with the bird on that one-sorry Candice!). ;)

9:53 PM

Why shooting should be banned on public lands:

I don't need to say too much. The pictures speak for themselves. These pictures were taken at ONE spot on NF-45 forest road in Mt. Hood National Forest. The road is also known as "Memaloose" or "Maymaloose" road depending on which sign and map you read. It is maybe 50 miles outside of Portland, southeast on Hwy 224 - along the Clackamas river. The country up there is some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. The ridge lines, and the deep jagged canyon from millions of years of raging water in the Clackamas river are something wonderful to behold. Driving up this road, we passed at least 5 spots that seemed to be popular with shooters, before we turned around. The road is a steep one lane paved road, and our GPS said we went from 700ft. at the river to 3000ft. almost instantaneously. At some points there are steep 1000 foot drops on either side of the road. It is breathtaking. Until you come across the shooting sites, which make you nauseous. I

Free Topographical Maps

The Libre Maps project has purchased and made available for free all of the USGS Topographical maps of the USA. All 50 states. The maps have always been free sort-of, there was just no where until now to actually GET them for free. The Libre Maps project raised enough funds to buy the many gigabytes of data and the Internet Archive is hosting them. These are great 24k scale topographical maps folks. The same types you pay for in sporting goods stores. And many applications on your computers can work directly with them and your GPS. You can get water and tear resistant paper and print them out.. All good stuff... For the lazy in the audience, here are Oregon's.

Not safer, just stupider.

The first definition of stupider is "Slow to learn or understand; obtuse." I think that there would be good cause to add to it "See American". Today, while passing through the security checkpoint at Portland International (PDX) I witnessed the TSA personnel sending people to the back of the line for not taking off their flip-flops. They shouted endlessly about removing liquids, regardless of size. And they generally treat every one of us like we were infants incapable of understanding simple instructions. But perhaps they might be on to something.

Incursio

Search This Blog