The Winter: Blue Jays

Why don’t blue jays get any love and respect from birders? It would seem that a bird with such strikingly beautiful plumage would have a long list of admirers and devotees (photo by D. Sillman). Looking around some birding web sites I found the following descriptions of blue jays:

“noisy, bold and aggressive”

“a servant of the Devil”

“disliked by many people for their aggressive ways”

“disliked because they chase smaller birds away from feeders”

“they make harsh calls”

“Infamous as a destroyer of eggs and nestlings”

Now all of these things may occasionally be true (with the notable exception of “a servant of the Devil” (which refers to an old African-American folk tale)), but there are also times when they are each quite false.

This noisy, aggressive bird becomes quiet and nurturing around its nest (and nestlings). Also, mated blue jay pairs tend to be monogamous, and they stay mated for life. The female does all of the nest incubation and is devotedly fed during these long weeks by the male. Once hatched and fledged the young blue jays stay with their parents in a tight, cooperative familial group well into the fall. The blue jay’s family values make most species look like barbarians!
Also, this “feeder dominating species” is itself often chased away from feeders by larger birds (like crows, red-bellied and red-headed woodpeckers, and common grackles). It may also be so intimidated by aggressive gray squirrels that it will not be able to utilize feeder resources at all. Further, the nest raiding behaviors that seem to dominate almost any ecological discussion of this species (see the last few sentences of the blue jay species page on the Virtual Nature Trail for an example) may not be entirely accurate. Recent studies of feeding behaviors and stomach content analysis of blue jays indicated that only 1% of the tested birds had any residue of eggs or nestlings in their stomachs.

 Maybe we all owe this species an apology?

Blue jays have a large throat pouch called the “gular pouch” in which they can store and transport seeds and nuts (especially acorns!). A blue jay’s gular pouch can hold up to five acorns at a time! Further, blue jays are known to be very selective about the acorns they take. They pick up only the healthiest, least weevil-infested acorns (and therefore the acorns that are the most viable and most likely to germinate!). This ability to gather up acorns and fly them off to a safer location for solitary dining coupled with the blue jay’s tendency to bury and store excess food makes them an active agent in acorn dispersal. It is suggested that the rapid spread of oak trees after the last ice age was due in large part to the energetic gathering and burying of the healthiest acorns by these very selective birds! On my own two acres in Armstrong County I have watched as oaks, brought in as acorns by blue jays from some distance away (twenty-four years ago when we moved here there were no oak trees within a half a mile of my house!) have germinated under the landscaping-planted spruces. These oak seedlings have in recent years grown through sapling stages into pole trees with heights well over twenty-five feet.

This winter I watched a blue jay out in my back yard take a peanut (which he had obtained from the front yard peanut feeder) and carefully, methodically sort through a thick mass of oak leaf litter (under a young red oak that the jay’s great-great-great-grandfather might have planted!) until he found a perfect spot to hide the nut. He then dug a small hole in the leaf litter, inserted the peanut into the hole, and carefully covered the hole over with some of the displaced leaves. The blue jay spent ten minutes in his careful search and burial. He then flew up and perched on one of the lower red oak branches and surveyed his cache from above. Finally, and I could infer from his body movements that there was a great deal of hesitation inherent in this, he flew away (maybe to get another peanut?). I was almost sad when a few minutes later a gray squirrel dropped down to the ground under the red oak, went right to the peanut burial spot (had he been watching the jay from a higher branch of the tree?), dug up the peanut and ate it. I bet it was, though, delicious.

I would like to add a few words about the much maligned songs of the blue jay. They do have a harsh, rasping, throaty call (let’s call this their everyday, “outdoor” voice), but they also have a wide range of both musical and innovative vocalizations including a pure tone whistle that regularly echoes across my fields and woodlots. Blue jays are also able to mimic the calls of red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks. There are many observations of blue jays using these calls to clear out a bird feeder so that they could then eat seed without annoying competition. Deborah and I once watched a blue jay up on a ridge over the Kiski River scream out red-tail hawk calls for no apparent benefit other than its own enjoyment. Last winter, on a snowy, cold, January morning, a blue jay in my street-side woodlot led me on a chase by making an American robin call from high up in the tree branches. I thought that I had an early sign of spring, but instead I was being tooled around by a musically creative blue jay!
In captivity blue jays, like their close, corvid relatives crows and ravens can be taught to imitate human speech and even make a variety of both animal-like and machine-like calls. Their intelligence, like the other corvids, is also quite impressive. They have even been described as making “tools” (folded pieces of newspaper) which they use to gather food from outside their cages.

Finally, I would like to talk about the courage that blue jays display. Blue jays are relatively slow flyers and are, therefore, quite vulnerable as prey for hawks and owls. Blue jays, though, respond to the presence of one of these birds of prey not in a cowering manner (which might increase the chances of survival of a given individual). Instead, blue jays become extremely loud (using their “outdoor” voice to great effect!) and agitated if a hawk or an owl has been spotted and form up in groups to harass and mob the intruder. Blue jays function as both the guard dogs and the security forces around the bird feeders they frequent to the great benefit of all of the other members of the feeder community.

So blue jays really aren’t the thug-like birds of our stories. They display strong family values, work as foresters and security guards, can sing with the best of our song birds (although sometimes they choose not to), and they don’t always eat their neighbor’s eggs and babies.
What more can your ask of a neighbor? They are a species to be cherished, indeed!