The jay: One of nature’s genuine oddities

I DON’T have a musical ear and I’ve never been good at identifying birds by their calls.

But I was walking in the wood the other day when I heard one that was unmistakable. Actually it was more than one — at least three birds high up in the canopy making a terrible racket.

It’s difficult to describe bird calls in print. I’ve just checked three books and one describes the call I heard as ‘kraih’, another as ‘shraah-shraah’ and a third as ‘skkaaaa’. All rather different, but you get the general idea — the loud, harsh and un-musical call of the jay.