Taking a break from Pathfinder & Worldscape, let’s
get back to the real world. It seems that Canada has chosen its’ national bird
this week, and it is the so-called gray jay, or the whiskeyjack.
So far so good, but if you are thinking that this is a
differently colored version of the blue jay, you would be wrong. The gray jay
belongs to a completely different genus of corvids than the blue and the
Steller’s jays do, (or the pinyon jay does, for that matter). It is a
long-tailed, medium-sized bird, colored more somberly than the most other
American jays are – not in blue, but in much more somber coat of different
shades of gray, with some whites and blacks thrown in for contrast and
variation. It has no crest either, and its appearance is more delicate and songbird-like
than a blue jay’s, for example.
Moreover, like many other corvids, the gray jay is an
opportunistic and resourceful bird – it lives in Canada, rather than in U.S.,
(well, duh), but it does not fear people, and will sometimes steal their resources
without any apprehension or anxiety for itself. Basically, it is a bird
analogue of the gray squirrel from eastern Canada and U.S. And – it has a
sticky saliva.
Gerald Durrell had encountered this bird and wrote
about it in his book ‘How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist’ – read it. It is a
good book, especially for the fans of wildlife and animals. He depicted how a
gray jay would take bits of food offered by him and his crew and stick it to
nearby tree branches with its’ saliva. Go jay!
That said, while most of the American jays are
exclusively American birds – (whether it is the blue and the Steller’s, the
pinyon, or the scrub jays), the gray jay’s immediate relatives live in Asia:
the Siberian jay that lives in Siberia, Russia, and the Sichuan jay that lives
in Szechuan, China. Regardless of being closely related to each other, each of
the three birds has a very distinctive look from the other two – they are
individual species, not subspecies or any other variants, but…so what?
Nowadays, there are plenty of people, never mind birds, who want to go to
Canada, which brings me to my last point.
John Oliver, of whom I am normally a fan, has been in
a dark place lately, since he proved to be a seer of some sort – he had
foreseen not just the Cubs’ winning, but also Donald Trump, so now he, and most
of the U.S. media will have to work with a president who is pointedly NOT a
friend of theirs; they’d been humbled, and by whom? Donald Trump. So now John
Oliver got vitriol coming out of his ears, (and so do the rest of his coworkers
and counterparts), and it is understandable. But – the only reason to come to
Canada if it is spring and you are a Canada goose (or a similarly Canadian
bird)? Mr. Oliver, that is out of line.
Yes, as some Canadian author had written, if it was
not for the American democracy, there would not be a Canadian one either, but
he had also written that no one in Canada really knows how the U.S. democracy
actually works. Put otherwise, U.S.A. and Canada might be neighbours, but they
got two different ways of making a society work, and you know what? I am
putting my foot down and saying that Canada is the better one. I am not
comparing Donald to Trudeau, this is like comparing apples to oranges turned
crazy, I am comparing the Canadian election to the American one: the stakes
weren’t THAT lower in the former, but it was done with much more decorum than
the latter, so, please excuse me, but Donald’s victory is symbolic – it’s
symbolic of the fact that it was the American society in total, all social
strata and variations has degraded its democracy so much; and Donald Trump –
no. This is about the gray jay, and the other birds, and the fact that for once
John Oliver is wrong: Canada is a fine country to live, and if you do not like
the new president-elect, or any other features of the ‘new’ U.S. so badly, then
it just might be the country for you.
Just listen to the gray jay and its distant
blue-colored cousins: they whole-heartedly agree.
No comments:
Post a Comment