In June of 2023, I was working outside and noticed some activity on the north side of the house – some Steller’s Jays were making a racket and it didn’t seem to be stopping. Upon investigation, their attention seemed to be directed at the ground in some bushes close to our deck. After searching, I found this:

It was a baby Steller’s Jay, and seemed to be in communication with a compatriot. Further under the deck, there was another.
Sherri and I were torn. Our first impulse was to gather them up so they couldn’t be harmed, but I tried to remain philosophical with a ‘let Nature take its course’ attitude. However, we did have a cat at the time (we now have two), so letting ‘nature take its course’ didn’t seem fair to the birds since there’s not much that’s natural about our artificially introduced pets. After a little research, however, I found that it’s illegal to remove the babies from their environment in Oregon. Quoting ORS 497.308: “No person shall remove from its natural habitat or acquire and hold in captivity any live wildlife in violation of the wildlife laws”.
We also found that the parents were close and very anxious. They kept flitting around nervously. Most people only get to experience one type of call that a Steller’s Jay makes – a raucous, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard call that wakes up the neighbors and has you running for something more calming after a few minutes. However, when the parents are communicating with their babies, it’s quite different – kind of a low, softly cheeping noise. It’s kind of endearing. We could see that both of the parents were very engaged and committed..
Over the next few weeks, we observed the parents and babies, and steered our cat clear. The entourage remained close to our home and we could find them through the parent’s calls to the chicks. The parents continued to feed them throughout, even though the babies were on the ground or in small bushes. The parents became conditioned enough to us that they stopped raising the alarm with that dismaying shriek of theirs when we came close. Did we ever get to a Cinderella-like state of the Jay family landing on us and getting fed? No, we had such fantasies, but no luck.
Here’s a picture of the Steller’s Jay chicks in the bushes:

After a few weeks, they had all moved further into the forest. I found them behind our pumphouse, but they looked more like adult jays. The parents were still close, and still making those fascinating peeping noises that seems reserved to their children. That’s the last we saw of them as far as we know, though we wonder every time that we see a Steller’s Jay now whether they’re part of that family. Other than their call, we love these beautiful, intelligent birds and are glad that the babies survived to be part of our ecology here.