Our local community of Stellar’s Jays are energetic fliers and omnivorous eaters. Social, smart, and family-oriented homebodies, they spend considerable time feeding and hiding food caches across their territory. Because they easily mimic other sounds, their daily vocalizations are delightfully varied. However, their gentle chittering and melodious songs can be quickly replaced by loud bossy squawking.
When a predator appears, their community coordination can be swift and spectacular.
An interior Stellar’s Jay with white eye streaks and blue crest streaks. Photo by Cynthia.
While observing our jays, a marten emerged from some bushes and crossed the snow!
Now, I had never seen a marten before! It reminded me of a weasel or domestic cat on the prowl. Nose to the ground, it had thick chestnut brown fur, short legs, long claws and cute curvy ears. It was really quite light weight (1-2 kg) with a long slender body (35–43 cm), and bushy long tail (18-23 cm).
A marten patrols the snow and sniffs for prey. Photo by Cynthia.
Martens spend most of their life alone and are skilled climbers.
After foraging on the ground, this marten lithely began to climb the trunk of one its favourite habitats, a tree. Photo by Cynthia.
As soon as it began to climb, a Stellar’s Jay raised the alarm. At least 10 jays swiftly flew over to the tree and began mobbing the marten — calling loudly, diving and swooping at the intruder, in an attempt to dissuade it. The jays sat on branches above, below and all around the Marten.
A Steller’s Jay vociferously squawks at a marten while staying out of reach. Photo by Cynthia.
Martens eat fruit, animals and carrion but this marten ignored the tree’s juicy rowen berries and seemed mostly interested in the birds.
The marten climbs a rowen berry tree and tries to get a jay. Photo by Cynthia.
From this angle, you can clearly see its pale whitish throat patches.
This acrobatic marten balanced and jumped easily between tree branches for about a half hour while the jays protested and dove at it. At one point, the marten stopped to nonchalantly lounge along branch, looking down while having a rest.Photo by Cynthia.
This posting will be followed by another which will show more pictures of the marten.
Thanks for the photos. Have never seen either one of these as I live in Missouri.
What a fabulous sequence. Thank you Cynthia and Alistair for sharing the magic and wonder of nature with us.
Great photos and what a great adventure Cynthia!
This incident, of which you grabbed some nice photos and which it seems you enjoyed so much, illustrates a number of points about animal behavior. One of which is that birds, like gray jays, blue jays and Steller’s jays will follow an animal of prey, like martens, pine martins, weasels, cougar, bears and wolves, hoping to pick up some scrap of food. I was out once when I heard what sounded like Canada jays murmuring in the tree-tops. I looked up and then down and caught sight of a tawny colored animal. Thinking it was a dog and moved to look around some bushes and there was a cougar heading back up the trail. The gray jays had apparently been following the cougar.
Wow! What fabulous photos and story Cynthia!
Wow! You captured some awesome photos during a special and extended event. Amazing that your presence did not disturb them and you got to see the whole thing.