Fans of the Scrubjay

After reading Robert Smaus’ April 27 article, “Critters Just Come With the Territory,” my husband and I suspect that you may get a lot of letters from avid scrubjay lovers.

Scrubjays are extraordinarily intelligent birds. In fact, it was they who taught us to feed them. They would land on the ground near where we were gardening and look here and there in deep thought, then, as if remembering, “Of course, it was there.” Then they would root around in the earth and leaves and come out with some peanut that they had buried earlier. Then, naturally, it’s back up to the nearest tree and great screeches of “Look at what I’ve got!”

That was 10 years ago. We’ve been feeding generation after generation of scrubjays in our small suburban backyard. We know them all by name.

We no longer feed our scrubjays by hand. We realized that it probably was not a good idea for them as wild animals. But they still trust us and communicate with us about many matters regularly.

Would you believe our e-mail address is:

[email protected]

BARBARA CASE and

JIM HALLORAN

Redondo Beach