Steller’s Jay – Tim Melling

Tim writes: on 31 July 1741 Georg Wilhelm Steller came ashore on Kayak Island and became the first European naturalist ever to reach Alaska.  Steller, a German, was a member of Vitus Bering’s expedition which had been sent by the Empress Anna of Russia to search for North America (although unbeknownst to them, the Empress had died 9 months earlier).  After a sea voyage of two and a half thousand miles he was only allowed one day ashore to collect specimens.  One stunning turquoise bird with a high crest really interested him because of its similarity to the American Blue Jay that he had seen illustrated in a book (Mark Catesby’s painting in the Natural History of Carolina 1731).  This proved to Steller that they really had landed in America.  That was the bird which we now know as Steller’s Jay, that inhabits forests along the west coast of North America.  The area of sea that separates Siberia and Alaska bears Bering’s name and is known as the Bering Strait.

I photographed this one on Vancouver Island on the Taylor River near Port Alberni.  It is the Provincial Bird of British Columbia though it occurs right down the west coast of America from Alaska to Nicaragua.

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