Bird: gray breast, black back, white tail

[drm]

Seen at 8000 feet at Bear Lake in the Wallowa Mtns. Species?

[adamschneider]

Clark's nutcracker.

[BigBear]

For what it's worth, I agree with Clark's nutcracker.

[retired jerry]

is that also called a "camp robber"?

There are these gangs of birds that attack my campsite occasionally and try to get into my food. I yell and throw rocks at them (never hit them though)

[adamschneider]

is that also called a "camp robber"?

There are these gangs of birds that attack my campsite occasionally and try to get into my food. I yell and throw rocks at them (never hit them though)

Nope, those are gray jays. They're smaller and fuzzier than nutcrackers.

[R11]

I think both are often called Camp Robbers kind of ubiquitously. The long billed Nutcrackers definitely show the same scrap stealing behavior just like the Gray Jays when they're in highly people populated areas. That's a good pic from DRM of the Nutcracker though because when you get away from the more heavily used areas with food to scam, they clearly become "cone peckers" instead, pecking away at cones to get at the seeds. Either way they're always determined little things aren't they? The last time I was up at Warm Lake in the Goat Rocks a couple summers ago they were working the tops of the little pines around camp as usual while I was standing in front of my pack leaned up against one of the trees. All the sudden a big, tight, pitch-soaked, green cone bounced off the ground right next to me. I looked up and saw one of them looking down at me intently, so I bent down and picked up the sticky cone and tossed it about twenty feet away to see what it would do. Sure enough it swooped down and managed to pick it up and flew off over the side of the bluff with it. It was kind of funny because it looked like it almost couldn't lift off, barely clearing the ground with the heavy, new cone .

ron

[mcds]

I think both are often called Camp Robbers kind of ubiquitously.

agreed

[adamschneider]

Interesting... I've never seen anywhere near that kind of brazenness from the nutcrackers.