The Says Phoebe Gets Around - New Mexico Notes

By Mel Carriere

I just got back from vacationing in Colorado and New Mexico for a few days, and hopefully the bird blogging business will crank up a notch or two.  This little family reunion road trip didn't turn out to be the birding bonanza I was hoping for.  There were plenty of barn swallows for everyone and then some - one pair was actually nesting in a hole in the roof above the front porch of the farmhouse where my mother grew up, and the birds got very nervous waiting on a high wire for the old codgers swapping yarns from the past to clear out so they could get about the business of feeding their babes.  I'm sure the swallows will have a future family reunion story or two of their own to tell about that one.  

I think I was the only one who even noticed the swallows.  The codgers just kept on jawing and lying while my soul bled for the anxious parents waiting above - but to my shame I did nothing. 

I also saw a Violent-green Swallow perched in a nook of an ancient stone wall at the Quarai ruins, a part of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument just outside of Mountainair, New Mexico.  The ruins there are remarkable and if you get off your butt and go right now it might still be green, a temporary blessing that has been visited upon this area after a decade of dismal drought.  So there's a plug for the ruins, of which there are actually three in the area, and here's a plug for my ancestral town of Mountainair, which is a fine spot from which to embark upon your ruins exploration, with the single disadvantage that there is not a single drop booze in town unless you break and enter into somebody's private liquor closet.  If you do enjoy a nightcap, plan accordingly, and if you elect to stay in Mountainair I highly recommend the Rock Motel.  It looks sort of Norman Bates-ish on the outside, but don't be frightened.  It is remarkably clean and new where it counts, on the inside.  The Ancient Cities Cafe just across the street from the Rock Motel also has wonderful food - great breakfasts, outstanding Mexican fare, and you can conveniently call out for their passable Pizza from the menu in your room at the Rock.

What does my little travelogue here have to do with Says Phoebes?   Not much, except to say that if I would have just gone ahead and brought my own neighborhood birds with me they would have felt right at home there on our old family farm south of Mountainair.  With the exception of a single Juniper Titmouse making  himself at home in one of his namesake shrubs, the birds I saw were the same ones I have seen time and again in my current San Diego neighborhood.

The barn swallows I mentioned before are not exactly common in San Diego, and tend to get lost in the swirling flocks of our signature Cliff Swallows, but if you look closely into the midst of such an aerial assemblage long enough you will spot a forked tail or two.  Their cousins the Violet-greens are also common up on Cuyamaca Peak, about an hour and a half from where I live.  

Another bird I could have just packed into my suitcase, TSA permitting of course, is the Mockingbird, which carves out its territory in the open fields between the New Mexico Junipers just as it defines its dominion in the open spaces between our Queen Palms and Sweet Gums back in San Diego.  I could see the distinctive white wing flashes of the Mockers as they flitted between fence posts, and at one point I spotted a pair tenaciously harrying a crow, also a sight I could have seen from my front porch in San Diego and kept the $119 plane fare in my pocket to boot, with which I could have bought a couple six packs of that elusive beer that disappeared from Mountainair along with the indigenous Tiwa Indians of the Salinas Pueblos, sometime in the 1600s I think.

There were also enough Says Phoebes out there on the farm to munch the house flies in my yard to extinction.  Fortunately, if you are a Musca domestica, there were sufficient flies in Mountainair's Pinyon-Juniper biosphere to harass a herd of buffalo over the edge of a cliff, so the Phoebes didn't seem to be lacking for food.  A Phoebe joined the swallows by nesting in the farmhouse roof, but did it a more remote corner where its activities seemed to be unhindered by human interference.  Again, I could have stayed home and watched Says Phoebes nesting.  Well, maybe not, my neighbor's cat seems to have extirpated them from my particular neighborhood just lately, another drawback of suburban birding.  Luckily, these Phoebes get around, and just like we prodigal sons, they always head back to the farm sooner or later, where there is enough open space to avoid feline deprivations.

So my New Mexico trip wasn't much of a bird Safari, but a change of scenery is always delightful, and I'll take a day sitting on a porch with a favorite Uncle or Aunt, watching a Phoebe dive bombing for bugs over a Southern California traffic jam any day.  

 Photo By Sayornis_saya_5.jpg: Linda Tanner from Los Osos, California, U.S.A. derivative work: Berichard (Sayornis_saya_5.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons



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Winged Sights and Sounds of the Sage Scrub

By Mel Carriere

Now would be as good as time as any to take a walk through the sage scrub, I suppose.  The unseasonable rainfall has somewhat rejuvenated things around here a bit, and the life down in the canyon bottoms should not be as dry and brittle as has been the norm since the politicians started getting serious about the water crisis.  Do the birds that bounce from sage to sumac worry about the drought on some level, or does nature automatically adjust for them, limiting their reproductive capabilities through the skillful application of hormones, or perhaps just "culling the herd" via natural Darwinistic survival of the fittest methods; in the process making sure there's enough to go around for the few that survive.

These are some heavy questions, but all I really want to do is take a walk through the canyon bottoms and get in touch with the bird life down in them.  When I first started birdwatching, a visit to the local canyon corridor was a monthly occurrence at least, but now it seems like years since I've gone.  I think I just ran out of new birds down there and sort of got tired seeing the same thing all the time.  Now I miss it, and I think it's time to go back.

San Diego has these fantastic undeveloped wildlife corridor canyons that criss-cross the city limits.  Depending on how much and how consistent the water that flows through their streambeds is, anything from low, scrubby willows to massive sycamores can be found growing there, along with the occasional invasive Pepper Tree or Russian Olive that has sprung up from a seed that strayed from someone's garden.  On the walls of these mini refuges within the sprawling metropolis one finds the Coastal Sage Scrub habitat, characterized by its low, drought tolerant scrubs, most notable of these being the chamise, various varieties of sage, buckwheat, and two or three kinds of sumac.  The chamise is also called greasewood, probably because it ignites like a grease fire when the autumn Santa Ana winds put it to the torch.

The sage scrub doesn't sound like much, and in truth it is not that impressive to look at either, especially during the long, dry summer that stretches through October.  Nonetheless, the sage scrub is the secret home of several interesting and lovely birds, and if you stick to the shaded canyon bottom and conduct yourself in an unobtrusive manner, many of these denizens of the Canyonlands will sneak down toward you and make their presence known, even though the bird guides and websites tend to describe them as "secretive."

Some are more secretive than others, I have discovered.  The bouncing ball song of the Wrentit is common everywhere, although the bird itself skulks in the thick brush and is frustratingly difficult to see.  The California Gnatcatcher is especially secretive for me, because I have yet to have a confirmed sighting of one, even though I have crossed its poor desert country cousin The Black Tailed Gnatcatcher off my list already.  Not so secretive are the Rufous Sided Towhees that flash their rusty flanks and muscle for territory with their drab California Towhee cousins that sneak down from the cool human gardens on the mesas above.  An occasional Roadrunner makes an appearance, and the California Quail can be heard singing that Frank Sinatra tune about the Windy City as they hunker down somewhere out in the brush.

The California Thrasher, which you see above, is also referred to as "secretive," but to me this is inaccurate.  The Cal Thrasher will boldly perch on a dry stick to proclaim its ownership of the Canyon in its rambling, disconnected, rather avant garde song that says "Yes I am the signature species of this place and without me it would suck down here."  Of course I have failed to capture the poetry in the message, but the real meaning is lost in translation.  You have to go and hear it for yourself.

One of my favorite memories of the sage scrub involved resting in the shadow of a Pepper Tree and watching as a California Thrasher strolled by casually within a few feet of me.  It looked like a Roadrunner in miniature, scratching through the dried leaf litter for edibles.  For a moment, at least, man and bird were at peace with one another there in the shade.

There is plenty of life just like this scratching around in those dry hills that line our Southern California coast.  It is a disservice indeed to say it is dead up there, because dead is far from the truth.  The beauty of this life is admittedly stark, but the hidden art of the sage scrub is all the more valuable because one has to work to see it.  It's time for me to get back to work; I need to return to the canyons before the cloud cover of the May Gray and June Gloom has disappeared; leaving me swooning in the July sun with my inert binoculars in hand.

The book below is highly recommended if you are planning a hike through the sage scrub or elsewhere in Southern California.





Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.


Above photo of the California Thrasher is attributed to:  "<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toxostoma_redivivum_-Morro_Bay,_California,_USA-8.jpg#/media/File:Toxostoma_redivivum_-Morro_Bay,_California,_USA-8.jpg">Toxostoma redivivum -Morro Bay, California, USA-8</a>" by <a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/72825507@N00" rel="nofollow">Mike Baird</a> from Morro Bay, USA - <a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2532590105/" rel="nofollow">California Thrasher, Toxostoma redivivum, Morro Bay, CA 28 May 2</a>Uploaded by <a title="User:Snowmanradio" href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Snowmanradio">snowmanradio</a>. Licensed under <a title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0">CC BY 2.0</a> via <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/">Wikimedia Commons</a>.

Strange Sounds from my Neck of the Woods - Western Tanager Updates

By Mel Carriere

My bird blog has been grounded for several days by a strange stomach bug I have been battling with that has left my typing fingers drained and weary, with no urge to take flight.  I hope those of you who are regular readers will pardon my absence as I shut myself up in my nest to recuperate.

There have been a couple of interesting developments in my little corner of the bird world since we last touched base.  On April 29th I went outside in the morning to hear the unusual sounds of what could have been Robins, which are very rare in this part of the country even though they are in extreme abundance in Northern California, but which I suspect were probably Western Tanagers, the bird you see in the photo above.  The song of the two is creepily similar, almost as if one was deliberately imitating the other, but the reason I lean toward Tanager is because the first of May is the time that these birds typically migrate through our suburban San Diego neighborhoods, on their way to breeding grounds in our county's higher, conifer covered elevations.  This is strictly anecdotal and does not have any research behind it, but it seems like since the 2007 fire stripped our Cuyamaca range of much of its tree cover I have not seen this species pass through in the numbers that it did formerly.

My first encounter with this bird came on 6 May, 1999, when I was delivering the mail on my route in South San Diego, very close to the area where it abuts with Imperial Beach.  The male tanager appeared very unexpectedly in an unkempt garden, and for me seemed as peculiar and out of place as finding an elephant drinking from your bird bath.  I was familiar with this splendidly colored bird because the beautifully plumaged males appropriately adorn the cover of many a field guide, but I had imagined the species to be restricted to the cool conifer canopies of upper elevations.

That day and for a few days afterward I came across Tanagers in abundance in some ornamental fig trees that lined a dead end street on my route.  I thought perhaps they were attracted to the thick clumps of fruit that hang down from those trees at that season, or maybe the insects attracted to the ripening fruit, or perhaps both.  At any rate, this brief apparition was not an anomaly because the tanagers returned punctually every year in the early days of May before moving on to the sugar pines and incense cedars of our higher peaks, where I would encounter them while roaming through the then blissfully shady glades that have since been laid barren and exposed by fire.  Then I myself migrated to other temporary job opportunities and lost touch with the tanagers for a while.

Fast forward to this 29th of April, when I thought I heard one singing from the row of Eucalyptus trees to the south of my neighborhood, but the thick foliage would not permit me to confirm the identity of the songster.  It could very well have been an equally rare, equally transitory Robin, but the proximity of the date to the first of May made me think, or perhaps want to believe because of an air of nostalgia for the past, that it was a tanager that was stopping by to refresh my memory of 1999's golden age of birding, when everything I saw with wings was new.

The same day I thought I saw a male tanager perched on a wire as I drove by it in my mail truck in approximately the same area I saw my first, but the glimpse was too fleeting to confirm it.  They could be out there in droves for all I know; this being, appropriately enough, the 16th anniversary of that first encounter, but because I sit here at home nursing my sick tummy they are singing out their wheezy Robin imitations without my being there to witness it.

I guess I will have to give my other bird updates later.  The tanagers have taken up more space than I expected.







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Wonderful image of this Western Tanager is by Kati Fleming, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, taken 26 June 2010 in Wyoming.  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Tanager_piranga_ludoviciana;_body_visible,_male.jpg#file

Crow Eats a Mouthful of Teeth - Thoughts on the Warm Blooded - Cold Blooded Conflict

By Mel Carriere

I guess it is only fair on a blog about birds to take pause, change directions, do an about face and write about reptiles for a change.  The ornithologists tell us, after all, that birds came from reptiles, although whether they were reptiles springing up from the ground (leaping lizard theory) or reptiles parachuting down from the trees (Rocky Flying Squirrel though a mammal not a reptile theory) is still the subject of a great deal of debate.  I take no position in this evolutionary hair splitting.  Who is to say that birds didn't develop from both directions at different times, or even at the same time?  I'll coin this as the Gliding Gecko in the Middle of the Wall Theory.

I'm not ready to completely fly the aviary and wriggle on my belly over into the field of herpetology, however.  This is not necessary, because ectotherms and endotherms still interact from time to time, and from what I've seen there is a great deal of vestigial resentment among the scaled set over this secession, combined with a fair amount of enmity within the feathered community that emancipation did not happen sooner.

For example, on my route today I witnessed a Crow doing battle with a feisty alligator lizard.  I have written a lot about Crows lately on this blog; mostly about a Crow I call Clyde who frequents my yard every morning and evening, poking about for provender.  My wife has been feeding him dried mealworms as a snack because she is afraid my son might start munching them in a fit of ravenous, insatiable, late night hunger when he comes back from the bar.  Last Sunday evening Clyde graciously accepted this snack offering from my wife, although he seemed to grow tired of the stale dried grubs and sauntered off looking disappointed, perhaps having assumed she had dumped a bag of tasty Doritos on the lawn, as any self respecting upright walking monkey normally would.

Just like these upright walking monkeys that we call human beings, Crows are unfussy omnivores that will eat just about anything.  This could be why throughout the course of history Crows and Humans do not get along.  These birds compete with us for the same food, and this is why there have been great Corvid purges during which we brand them as the minions of Satan as a justification for their extermination.  Fortunately these Crow holocausts never work; the birds are just too clever and adaptable and no matter how many we kill they always come back.

Every once in a while, however, a Crow meets a bump in the road, and the Crow I saw today met his personal speed bump in an alligator lizard that he was trying to consume.  I was driving by the warm blooded cold blooded conflict in my Postal vehicle, and because I had cars behind me I couldn't stop to take a picture.  All the same, the millisecond snapshot I captured in my mind revealed a lot.

Alligator lizards are feisty little beasts and notorious biters. Any experienced amateur herpetologist schoolboy will approach the business end of this reptile with extreme caution.  The particular Elgaria multicarinata I caught a glimpse of day before yesterday was no exception.  He was a scaly package full of fierce teeth, all of which he bared defiantly upward in the Crow's direction.  For his own part, the Crow was trying to figure out a way to carefully work around those fearful fangs.  Since the alligator lizard was missing his tail, I am assuming the Crow had at least scored a mouthful of rump roast, but apparently was not completely satiated by this wriggling appetizer because he seemed determined to supplement that scaly cut of meat with some choice tenderloin from the lizard's flanks.

I don't know how the battle turned out.  If I had to bet, I would say that the lizard's teeth were too much for the Crow.  As I have mentioned before on this blog, Crows are the kings of easy pickings, and will gladly forsake a potential banquet that requires a substantial expenditure of energy for a meager diet plate that is an easy grab.  Dried mealworms handed out by my wife will do in a pinch, if the alternative is a chancy reptilian smorgasbord that means fighting around some nasty dental work.




Photo from Arachnodemon on:  http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?35013-Southern-Alligator-Lizard

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My Life List #1 - Snow Goose

By Mel Carriere

Turns out my life list was wrong.  I wrote a previous post here about the Common Loon being the #2 bird on the list, but that bird should actually be #30.  I made this error because in the field guides the Loons are always first, but on the American Ornithologist Union (AOU) Checklist the Loons actually come after the Timamiformes, Anseriformes and Galliformes.  Therefore, since my own list conforms to the AOU guidelines I ask that the real occupant of first place please stand up - and this is the Snow Goose, Anser caerulescens.

I am happy to write about this bird, because it takes me off on happy birding trips with my family a long way from home, a long time ago.  My first encounter with the Snow Goose was in 1999, an excellent year for my list, because that was my first year birding and everything was new.  I actually made some totally Asperger's spreadsheet out of my life list, and the calculations there demonstrate that 1999 gave me 54.89% percent of my bird total as it currently stands.

More specifically it was 27 March, 1999 when my family visited Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico on our way home from Albuquerque, where my Mother lived at the time and where I grew up.  More neckbeard stats - spreadsheet says that although Bosque Del Apache has contributed only .08 percent of my list, the state of New Mexico is responsible for 11.16% of the total, a distant second place from California, my home state, which has an almost insurmountable lead with 83.26 percent.

I remember it being sometime toward evening that we were driving the dirt roads in Bosque Del Apache that form little levees around the flooded fields where the birds are.  Spotting an enormous flock of geese to the North of the road I stopped the car and got out to have a peek.  I believe these birds must have been recently hunted because they were very skittish.  No sooner had I satisfied myself through my binoculars that these were Snow Geese then I was spotted and the entire spooked flock of at least a few hundred took flight in magnificent fashion.

The second time I saw Snow Geese was at Sony Bony NWR in the Imperial Valley, not far from here in San Diego.  Those birds were indeed being hunted; we could here the booming of shotguns all around us, and a park ranger actually stopped me to check that I wasn't one of the shooters.  Satisfied that I was armed with nothing but a pair of cheap binoculars he drove off to look for the real offenders, being concerned that these hunters had intruded onto the refuge.  I remember that my wife got some pretty good pics of these Snow Geese, and I may just look for them.

The snow goose is mysterious in its own way because it breeds in the far north above the Arctic Circle, which means that since this Goose has to spend 6 months out of the year travelling the birds I saw were undoubtedly on their way to the Arctic or on the way back. The Snow Goose reminds me of my own travelling, so apart from holding the prestigious #1 spot on my list it is dear to me because it brings to mind the truth that in order to refresh the body, mind, and spirit, one must migrate.

Photo from:  "Anser caerulescens CT8" by Cephas - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anser_caerulescens_CT8.jpg#/media/File:Anser_caerulescens_CT8.jpg

Fuzzy snow geese in the Imperial Valley are either by me or my wife.  I blame my wife.

Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.

Gloomy Drought Thoughts - I Will Miss Scenes Like this Crow Among my Queen Palms

By Mel Carriere

I apologize that Birds by Mel was grounded for a few days - my wings were clipped by some sort of weird bug that got stuck in my crop and kept me snuggled in my roost as I recuperated.  Luckily I think my brain might have taken wing again; we'll see what happens as I forage along on my writing lawn, looking to pull out a tasty verbal grub or two to whet your appetite.

The drought has become serious business here in Southern California.  The Sierra snow pack is at 8 percent of normal and the Governor's shrill, constantly repeated mantra is "those days are over!  Do you enjoy a game of golf - Those days are over!  Do you like a dip in the swimming pool on a hot day - Those days are over!  Anything that involves aquatic fun is now over, per the Governor.  Do you take pleasure wiggling your tootsies in your cool green grass - Those days are over!  Yes, even that.

We here in California have been given a mandate that we have to reduce our water usage by 25% or else face dire consequences.  The almonds need to be watered, and we can't invest in desalinization plants on the coast to give us unlimited access to H2O because we really need that 60 billion dollar high speed rail through the Central Valley, even though it is mostly a depopulated desert now.

The city of San Diego, where I do not live, is apparently initiating a program where they will pay home owners $1.50 per square foot to replace their lawns with drought tolerant plants.  I imagine it will only be a matter of time before the city of Chula Vista, where I do live, follows suit.  And then, as the drought continues, sooner or later lawn removal will no longer be voluntary and the homeowner payments will, of course, cease as the funds dry up with the withering grass.

Therefore, I think it behooves me to get on board with the destruction of my front lawn sooner rather than later. I really enjoy looking at this little piece of God's green earth, even though the only time I actually wiggle my own tootsies within its soft, verdant blades is when I mow it every two weeks or so.  Most of the reason why I enjoy it is because of the feathered visitors I receive there regularly, such as this crow I found foraging among the Queen Palms this morning.  Crows are seen as morbid harbingers of death, as merciless raiders of birds nests, and as a general neighborhood nuisance whose raucous, dissonant  hawk scolding cries have put an end to many a pleasant afternoon nap, but I still like them.  Their alert eyes sparkle with intelligence and appear to be windows into a cunning, clever Corvid mind full of secrets and lore.

My wife likes crows too.  She has been trying to feed them lately with a bag of dried meal worms we have had in the pantry for a long time and that my oldest son has been threatening to eat as snacks.  Because he is eccentric enough to attempt it my wife has been desperately trying to get rid of them by offering them to the crows, but they just won't come when the dinner bell rings.  Despite the fact that they live in our yards and eat our excess food, the independence of these birds is fierce and legendary.

Anyhow, when I finally have to break out that spade and pick and rake and remove the grass I toiled so strenuously to plant I will miss crow visitations like the one I had this morning.  The bird you see above was generous above to pose for a picture or two as he scrounged for edibles in a lawn that is like a little green ocean, unruffled on the surface but full of life underneath.  The grass has been a little ecosystem all its own for about fifteen years, sustaining the Crows and Yellow-rumped Warblers that feast on its bounty, sometimes Pipits when the place was new and not so overgrown. It is hard to say, and sad to think about, whether the hard bitten desert flora that takes its place will provide an ecological climate capable of giving these same kind of pleasant avian visitations.


Photo is my own.  The Crow was very generous to cooperate, because I am always slow on the draw.

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Corvid vs. Corvid - Crow and Scrub Jay Battle for Bragging Rights

By Mel Carriere

There are two worlds that human beings live in, two worlds that are superimposed upon one another, or perhaps two layered worlds would be a better way to put it.  The top layer consists of the rather illusory technology-dominated society that Homo sapiens inhabits, and the other world is the "real" world dominated by living and competing organisms that struggle to survive.  

Sometimes humanity changes layers involuntarily, like when there is a major natural disaster or a war, or perhaps a zombie apocalypse, and in these cases the electrical grid, telephone systems, and all creature comforts disappear.  In such circumstances we humans revert back to our natural state and conduct ourselves according to the dictates of our rapacious animal nature, because we are no longer equipped to live in the layer that is subject to the cruel, capricious, merciless whims of nature.  At other times we willingly forsake the illusion of this technological "matrix" layer, eat the red pill and go off the grid because we choose to.  In these voluntary cases living in the natural layer can be peaceful, contemplative, and rewarding.

Then there are other times when we willingly oscillate back and forth between layers, or even exist in both at once.  When we make ourselves aware that both layers are superimposed upon one another the layering really ceases to exist and we can enjoy the comforts of civilization while at the same time appreciating the natural world.  Such happens to me when I am delivering the mail.  While keeping one eye on my scanner and the bar codes on the packages and the clock on my phone to make sure I am on time, with the other eye and with both ears I try to stay tuned to the world of birds around me.

The birds that inhabit the neighborhoods I deliver to have little, if any, technology to speak of.  They live completely in that separate, off the grid world where survival is a daily battle and one misstep or miscalculation means either death or reproductive failure.  

For example, I witnessed such a struggle today when a flash of brilliant blue drew a swoosh across my field of vision, which made me look up from the mail to see a Scrub Jay chasing a Crow out of its territory.  The Jay's harsh, non musical, raspy complaints were enough to indicate its severe displeasure.  After the suddenly meek, contrite, non threatening Crow had been driven back a safe distance the Scrub Jay went back into the thick foliage of a tree that I assume was in close proximity to its nest.

Earlier I had seen this same Crow loitering around this tree, perching itself upon a rooftop from where it kept tabs on the goings on at chez Scrub Jay.  I think it was waiting for the adults to disappear so it could trespass into the living room of its Corvidae cousin and help itself to an omelette, kind of like when your trashy trailer park cousins show up unannounced and raid your fridge, except that they are hopefully not eating your future children. 

The Jay was in no mood for hospitality and the Crow was not hungry enough to press the issue seriously.  I have noticed that Crows in particular are very economical in terms of the energy they expend feeding themselves.  The Crow was significantly larger than the Jay and could have kicked its butt in a fair fight, but it chose to look for easier pickings elsewhere.  "Pick your battles" seems to be the wise motto there in the natural layer.  Unlike Homo sapiens here in the matrix layer, Crows do not indiscriminately bomb their enemies for effect, leaving behind a mass of blood and dead bodies with nothing to show for it.

Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.

Scrub Jay picture is from:  "Western Scrub Jay holding an Acorn at Waterfront Park in Portland, OR" by Original uploader was Msulis at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Common Good using CommonsHelper.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Scrub_Jay_holding_an_Acorn_at_Waterfront_Park_in_Portland,_OR.JPG#/media/File:Western_Scrub_Jay_holding_an_Acorn_at_Waterfront_Park_in_Portland,_OR.JPG