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It was on days like this that Sandra M. would look out the window of her home in rural Washington state and notice a strange sight. A pair of Stellar's jays —those gorgeous, glossy, midnight-blue birds of western forests —would fly into her yard and land on the lawn. They would spread their wings and just sit, with their beaks wide open.

Sandra has been wondering what these nutty jays are doing. “A friend of mine thinks they are warming themselves,” Sandra writes. “I've witnessed this behavior only in the summer and only on sunny days. What do you think they're doing?”

It sounds like your Stellar's jays are cooling off by “panting.” The process looks similar to the panting of a dog —with open mouth and stepped-up breathing rate —but the similarities are strictly visual.

Dogs pant because they have sweat glands on their tongues. Birds have no sweat glands at all. They deal with excess body heat by breathing more rapidly; each breath collects the warm, moist air from overheated body organs and expels it. At the same time, the flow of air over the bird's mouth tissue and pharnyx serves as a cooling breeze.

For us humans, a rapid change in body temperature of just one or two degrees can cause serious problems. A bird, on the other hand, goes through a typical day with great variations in body temperature. The American robin, for example, has a daily variation of 10.6 degrees Farenheit. Perching birds, like robins and Stellar's jays, have an average body temperature of about 109 degrees F. With birds, though, “average” doesn't mean as much. Given their near-constant pace and variety of activities, including flight, their body temperatures are often in flux.

If the Stellar's jays were warming themselves, as your friend suggested, they would definitely not have their mouths open. Nor would they be on the ground — a high tree limb exposed to the sun would offer much more heat, I suspect. So I think they're cooling off. Isn't this how it goes? Just a few weeks ago I was panting from the heat, too. Now I'm getting ready to start complaining about the cold.

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