Okanagan Vacation 9 - Apex Mountain (birds)
June 26th, 2011
Our next trip was up another snow-capped mountain. We had heard there was a chairlift up there that operated even in summer. We figured it would at least be a fun ride and might be a way to see some truly alpine birds. Alas, our information was apparently out of date.
The ski village, though, was a gold mine of Clark's Nutcrackers, a species I'd been seeking since my arrival. Clark's Nutcracker is one of the west's truly unique birds, with no close cousin in the east (though it does have one in Eurasia.) It's a corvid (crow relative) of the Rocky Mountains specialized for eating pine seeds. Like a squirrel, it caches large amounts of food in fall and uses these caches to survive the harsh winters. Clark's Nutcrackers form long-lasting pair bonds and males contribute equally to childrearing, even brooding eggs in the nest.
The village was teeming with them. They were backyard birds there, clearly comfortable around humans and human habitation.
"Corvids" was the theme of the trip, in fact. We saw lots of Gray Jays. Gray Jays occur coast to coast in Canada's mountainous and boreal regions. (The nearest place to find them in our area is Algonquin Park.) They're big fluffy gray and white birds, quite tame, even known to feed from the hand--sort of like overgrown chickadees!
A Steller's Jay made a brief appearance amidst one flock of Gray Jays.
June 26th, 2011
Our next trip was up another snow-capped mountain. We had heard there was a chairlift up there that operated even in summer. We figured it would at least be a fun ride and might be a way to see some truly alpine birds. Alas, our information was apparently out of date.
The ski village, though, was a gold mine of Clark's Nutcrackers, a species I'd been seeking since my arrival. Clark's Nutcracker is one of the west's truly unique birds, with no close cousin in the east (though it does have one in Eurasia.) It's a corvid (crow relative) of the Rocky Mountains specialized for eating pine seeds. Like a squirrel, it caches large amounts of food in fall and uses these caches to survive the harsh winters. Clark's Nutcrackers form long-lasting pair bonds and males contribute equally to childrearing, even brooding eggs in the nest.
The village was teeming with them. They were backyard birds there, clearly comfortable around humans and human habitation.
"Corvids" was the theme of the trip, in fact. We saw lots of Gray Jays. Gray Jays occur coast to coast in Canada's mountainous and boreal regions. (The nearest place to find them in our area is Algonquin Park.) They're big fluffy gray and white birds, quite tame, even known to feed from the hand--sort of like overgrown chickadees!
A Steller's Jay made a brief appearance amidst one flock of Gray Jays.
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Mike
June 27th, 2011 at 8:17 am
Ah, corvids... cute and smart, just what I like!
Gillian
July 7th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
The Gray Jays do seem more like chickadees than corvids, perhaps because they aren't noisy like Blue Jays and their relatives! What were the Stellar's Jays like?
Suzanne
July 7th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
Noisy :-) (Although not as much as the nutcrackers--those have loud grating KRRAAKs.) They had a Red-Tailed Hawk mimic call that was quite convincing. Although if you listened to it carefully, it wasn't as impressive-sounding--sounded like maybe a miniature Red-Tailed Hawk.
I didn't find them quite as tame as Blue Jays. And they seemed to prefer high elevations. All but one of my Steller's Jays sightings were in the mountains. They were hard to find elsewhere.