Two Jays

A gray and blue jay, Algonquin Provincial Park, January 2016

Nice to see some jewelry on that Grey jay.

Very nice Ishrani.

Excellent !

Nice shots, especially the Gray Jay.

Very nice Ishrani, love them both!

Nicely done Ishrani, hope to go up to the Park soon.

Wonderful shots Ishrani.

Excellent set my dear!

2 Beauties right there! I need to get myself up to Algonquin!

Very good, Ishrani, the Grey Jay is one that I'd like to see AND shoot!
(I really love its bracelets too!)

Randy

Very nice pictures. I see the gray is banded. Looks very cold.

Very nice set.

Many thanks for all your fine comments. For those who are curious about the banding, here is some interesting info I picked up on the net...

Gray Jay research in Algonquin Park began back in the 1960s. The late Russell J. Rutter (1899-1976), a well-known Ontario naturalist, was working in the Park at the time and became intrigued by the Gray Jays. He decided to use a new technique called colour-banding to identify individual Gray Jays and see what he could learn of the Gray Jay's then almost completely unknown ecology and nesting behaviour. Every jay was given its own unique combination of coloured plastic and standard aluminum bands and promptly released. From then on it could be recognized as an individual, and given a name, according to its band combination. With the use of this one simple technique, and many hours of follow-up observations of course, Russ was able to begin the long process of sorting out the basic biology of Gray Jays. He was the first to determine that Gray Jays lived on permanent territories, that they lived for a very long time, and that they tended to nest in the same general area, year after year.

Later, the Algonquin Gray Jay study was taken over by Dan Strickland. Since the early 1980s Dan and volunteer helpers have been finding about 20 nests each year, banding the young, and following the fortunes of adults and young alike. Since Dan's retirement in 2000, he has been able to devote even more time to the study, now one of the longest-running studies of a marked population of vertebrates anywhere in the world. In partnership with Dr. Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph (www.norrislab.ca) the study of Gray Jays in Algonquin has led to new and valuable insights into their ecology and behavior.