This week we hiked to the top of Mount Avalon. The first half was nice easy walking (on a very wide and well-trampled trail, because it is right next to the Crawford Notch Highland Center), but the second half was a giant vertical stone staircase. With no handrails.
Now, a cool thing about Mount Avalon is that you're pretty much in forest the entire walk. But when you get right to the summit, there is a pile of granite (really, the tiny bald peak of the mountain) that sticks out above the trees. As we walked up to this little bald spot, Aaron stopped in front of me and pointed to a bird. Usually there are not too many birds around us when we hike because we are, well... big blustery humans. But this one was on a tree right at eye-level, about 6 feet from us. And he didn't seem bothered by our presence at all.
We clambered up onto the summit and the bird followed us! Then I got an inkling that maybe this was a bird who was used to humans. I set down the backpack and opened it up to get the camera, and the thermos of hot tea. And let me tell you, I have never seen a bird move so fast as this one to that backpack.
You know what's in backpacks? FOOD. If you are a bird person you may recognize Charles (as named by Aaron) as being a Gray Jay. Also known as "camp robbers" for their bold behavior around humans. We didn't know what he was until we looked him up, but we knew he looked like some sort of chickadee on steroids. Like maybe what a little bird would grow into given an UNLIMITED SUPPLY of trail mix.
I know you are not supposed to feed wild animals. But you try sitting there with a tiny bird sitting on your knee, and see if you are strong enough to resist giving him little bits of your apple. And bread. And cookies. I am not that strong, so Charles got some little nibbles. He is smart, that little guy, so he would take his nibble and fly off to his nearby trees and stash it somewhere, then pop back over for more. I bet if you explored that area you would find a whole menagerie of human foods among all the branches. Gray Jays do not migrate (and they start building nests and incubating eggs absurdly early, like Feb/March), so we were just helping Charles build up a winter food store. You know, nice and neighborly-like.
You might notice that behind Charles all you see is GRAY. That is because the whole world was foggy and visibility was about 20 feet. However, Charles kept us entertained for long enough that we were still on the summit for the 8 minutes where the whole valley cleared as the weather transitioned from "drizzly foggy clouds" to "RAINSTORM". The rock summit is only about 200 square feet, but once you climb up on top of it, you can see above all the trees, so we got to look all the way down Crawford Notch and all the way up the Mt. Washington Valley. It was pretty great. Then it started pouring.
