While deep in the Ochoco Mountains we ran across a nice flowing creek.
I love running water and just had to stop!!
Upon inspection of where we were it was obvious this spot had been used as a hunting camp. The legs of the elk and the "meat hangers" (we laughed for I am sure there is a real name for them ha) , that were nailed to the trees. The feathers laying around looked as if maybe a turkey was in the mix with the elk? Even a spot for a bathroom. Gave us this impression.
Guy wondered further down the creek then I for things happen to catch my eye. So I was wondering around on my own taking shots of the ice that was found where the water was not running fast.
As I was doing my thing I heard some racket that was obviously coming from the trees and from birds.
As you can imagine wild creatures do not just sit still so one can snap off photographs, so off I went to get this loud birds photographs! There were at least 3 of these birds, however non of them were all that impressed with any of us there! From the information I gathered of this bird, these must of been truly wild Gray Jays!! Not yet ingrained with human presents.
I first thought this was a nutcracker. We have many of those around so it seams. Same family as these Gray Jays, but so is the steller's jay,blue jay and the western scrub jay , the crows, the ravens there is a lot of species in the Corvidae family!! From the sub species of the Gray Jay and getting these photographs in the Ochoco mountains this determined these to be the Bicolored Gray Jay.
One thing all these birds have in common is, they are very smart!! Smarter then humans give them credit for! Over the Cascade Mountains there is yet another sub species of the Gray Jay over there with different needs and habits. That Gray Jay does not like snow, the ones here better like snow!
Like all birds of the Corvidae family, they are pretty much scavengers, however it appears all the species of the Gray Jay have different food s
I pay a lot of attention to Ravens. Some of my best photographs came to be because of the ravens.
Ravens are really just a big crow. They are a very intelligent bird, which I guess some can argue with. They work as a team. As a family unit and are very bold creature. More than one raven is called "An unkindness of ravens", I can see why because wow can they drive off the biggest of creatures! There are ten species of the Raven with two more that are said to be extinct.
The Magpie appears to be tolerated by the Raven, though they too are finally ran off by the bigger Raven. The Magpie we have here are very smart birds, though I really do not "listen" to them as I do the Raven. After seeing the all the Ravens in a small clearing it did not take Guy long to stop the truck and off I went into the brush.
Guy seen a little of what the Ravens were doing, this was running off the eagles. There were two eagles. One was a big Golden Eagle, the other was a young smaller Bald Eagle.
Many of these two species of eagles are showing up together these days. I have not noticed this in years past, but this year WOW has this been obvious!
The Golden Eagle standing on the prey is the first thing we noticed after the Ravens. The prey I could not identify. Did I want to identify it, not really!! It was white and it appeared to have died some time ago. One thing people do not understand about Eagles, the Golden Eagle and the Bald Eagle is, they will take a meal whether they themselves hunted it down, or if it died by some other means. Eagles will do their best to steal prey as well. The species of eagles are opportunists. They can be scavengers.
The Raven were doing the best they could to run off the Eagles, but the Golden Eagle was having no part of being ran off by Ravens! The young Bald Eagle was trying to grab some of the meal when I was getting close, but took off up into a tree to watch.
These are the photographs of this event.
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