I WAS ROBBED!!!!

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Wesakechak (also spelled Wisakedjak, Whiskey-Jack, and several other ways.) Wesakechak is the benevolent culture hero of the Cree tribe (sometimes referred to as a "transformer" by folklorists.) His name is spelled so many different ways partially because Cree was originally an unwritten language (so English speakers just spelled it however it sounded to them at the time), and partially because the Cree language is spoken across a huge geographical range in both Canada and the US, and the name sounds different in different dialects. The correct pronounciation in Plains Cree is similar to wee-sah-keh-chahk.

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Female incubating her eggs

Breeding Gray Jays build nests and lay eggs in March or even February, when snow is deep in the boreal forest, temperatures may plunge far below freezing, and there is no obvious food to support reproduction. In spite of such hostile conditions, Gray Jays have a high rate of nest success and the young typically leave the nest in late April, well before most boreal birds have even returned from the south, let alone begun nesting themselves. Just as strange, Gray Jays never bring off a second brood in the same season even though there would probably be time to do so and therefore to produce more young per year than they actually do. Stored food enables nesting jays to feed their young even during a blizzard but this only explains how Gray Jays can get away with nesting in late winter and contributes nothing to understanding why it is advantageous to do so. Among other possible benefits, early nesting Gray Jays have nesting over and done with at a correspondingly early date and can invest more food storage effort into their territories before the following winter. Assuming much of the stored food lasts until the onset of cold temperatures, storing more food on the territory should mean that early nesting jays have a better prospect of making it through the long, seemingly foodless boreal winter by staying at home and therefore avoiding the dangers of migration. This might mean that fewer young would be produced each breeding season (than if nesting occurred in June) but if it means that early nesting Gray Jays live longer and nest more often, they may still produce more surviving young in the long run than if they re-nested, or nested just once but later in the season).

Edited November 13, 2012 by capt_hooked