Crashing the Blue Jay's Wake

What a remarkable world we inhabit: remarkable in that Gil and I often “remark” about some interesting event, critter, or transition in the world around us. Yet, however much we consider ourselves simply as passive observers, we still participate.

Like at the blue jay’s wake. 

My husband Gil and I live in the woods next to the White Mountain National Forest. Our home has windows. Birds crash into their own reflections there, some defending their territory, some thinking the reflected branches are yet more forest, some in what appears to be a hormone-induced tizzy during mating season. Windows kill some birds. Some survive.

We see ghostly smudges and bits of feathers on our windows, and watch as dazed birds regain their composure, shake themselves, and return to the forest. Last year we had a most incredible full-body imprint of a blue jay on a window. It looked like the Shroud of Turin. We think we would recognize that individual jay today, its image was so remarkable. 

The National Audubon’s Web site says: “Recent evidence shows that collisions with glass may be a major source of avian mortality that's widely overlooked. Experts believe that about 100 million birds die each year in collisions with buildings and skyscrapers in the U.S. and Canada alone.” Wow! More reason for awe and action.

At dusk a blue jay flew into a window on the north side of our home. It laid in the snow, stiff little legs in the air, a look of disbelief in its open eyes. Gil picked it up to toss into the woods, where it would complete the cycle of birth to decomposition. We looked at the beautiful, now-silent, formerly bullying bird, its regal pointy head, its deep blue feathers still lustrous. We pursed our lips in a moment of guilt and recognition.

Then Gil tossed the dead jay into a brushy area with glacial boulders, moss, and discarded Christmas trees. The bird landed awkwardly. We shrugged, assuming some critter would appear in the night and grab it for a quick protein blast.

The following mid-morning, a raucous ruckus stopped us in our tracks, the sound exponentially louder than the normal alarm signaling a predatory bird in the neighborhood or the announcement of refilled birdfeeders. We peered into the trees.

A blue jay sat on each tree and branch within a thirty-foot radius of the dead jay, all screaming at that stiff, still angle of blue that held their attention.

Each live bird faced the dead bird. More flew in to join the commotion. The feeders sat empty. No other birds chirped or sang or cried, as if to reserve this sacred moment for the blue jays. They blamed and shouted and pleaded. They cawed and keened and criticized.

From branches only a few feet from the ground, forty, fifty, sixty feet up, all faced their dead compatriot. Some flew in closer to the deceased, tilting their heads as if to confirm death; others remained high above, calling to yet more jays from further distances, shouting the news.

It all lasted about three minutes. It seemed much longer. We stood, frozen, awestruck. We think forty or fifty blue jays attended the wake. When it ended, it ended abruptly. The forest went silent. Eerie.

One by one, the jays flew off. Then a chickadee chirped, a finch flitted to a feeder, and the forest regained normalcy. The dead blue jay has since been overlooked, forgotten, ignored, left to decompose with brittle blue spruce carcasses, quietly back into the earth.

Gil thinks the jays were confused and were either encouraging the dead bird to get up or running impact trajectories about how the bird had bounced that far from the window.

I think they knew the bird was dead. I can’t help but anthropomorphize. I think that community of jays gathered for a mourning ritual and cawed a eulogy.

Gil and I eavesdropped through the keening and cawing at the blue-jay’s wake, despite our guilt, despite knowing our home’s windows had killed a territorial and assertive blue jay, and numerous uneulogized chickadees, titmice, and finches. We even ate the grouse that broke its neck last winter.

This weekend we installed window coverings to reduce heat loss from our home. The Audubon Society recommends shades with a white backing like ours to decrease the reflectivity of windows and minimize  crashing incidents like the one that killed the jay. Our shades look good, save energy, cover the smudged windows, and—we  hope—will improve the longevity of our avian neighbors.

I say, if we are here to live, really live, we need to do all we can to minimize our impact on neighboring communities of other species. We need to acknowledge and respect our surroundings, with wonder and joy, some guilt, but mostly with awe.

By Laura Richardson, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener