Steller's Jay
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Steller's Jay
Cyanocitta stelleri
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map and range not to any scale. Range may not be absolute.
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This is a fairly large Jay 12 to 13 inches. In the past I have only seen these Jays at high elevations, 6 to 7 thousand feet in Arizona. In the winter of 2000 they seem to have moved to lower elevations. I have now seen then in the greater Phoenix valley area which I believe is only 1000 to 1500 feet above sea level.
I have seen these birds eat most every thing from baby birds, frogs, table scraps from picnic areas. You name it I believe this bird would eat it.
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While having a picnic at Sun Set Crater, Arizona, there seemed to be a Jay on every branch just waiting for a morsel of food to drop to the ground so they could swoop down from their perch and grab it.
The above photo is of an immature Steller's Jay. Male or female?
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Many times they would wait perched on the end of the picnic table, and it you didn't keep a sharp look out they would grab your food right from the table when you weren't looking.
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To keep them from steeling our table food I threw out a few sun flower seeds and some raw peanuts.
Now if you have watched jays you know they will try to put all of the food they can into
their beak until they start dropping the food they had previously picked up.
The above jay kept picking peanuts, but I didn't see it swallow them. So, let's take a closer look.
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Just as I thought, This jay had more than one peanut.
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I had spilt my Coke and no sooner than I did a young jay flew over and started to drink it.
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A few more images I took while at the Grand canyon 08/14/05
Bird links page. Jay index page.
You may contact me at birdfotos@aol.com
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