Blue Jays

RBG Arboretum, Hamilton. ON.  October 12, 2024. This was one of the best days birding in a while. Perhaps it was the fine weather, certainly it suited me, but it’s the bigger weather events that nudge birds into heading south and make our transect work more varied.

I completed one of our transects, thoroughly enjoying a few special moments: dozens of White-throated Sparrows in one patch of weedy grasses, flocks of Cedar Waxwings settling into tree-tops and Yellow–rumped Warblers busily working wherever the sun stirred small insect movement. A Peregrine Falcon turning in relaxed circles high over the lake was a nice sighting, followed a little later and much lower, by a young Bald Eagle who cruised along unconcerned by the consternation it caused to the many ducks below:  Gadwall , Mallards and Northern Shovellers.

My Birds of the Day were hundreds of Blue Jays.  There was an intermittent stream of them passing overhead, trending south and west; but just as many stayed, milling around, socializing and most importantly feeding. A huge acorn crop made the ground crunchy in places and dozens of jays had found and preferred the fallen acorns of one Northern Pin Oak in particular. The wide green expanse beneath the tree often had 20 or 30 Blue Jays all feeding hungrily, gulping down just two, three or four acorns before leaving, crop bulging, to be quickly replaced by another hungry jay. I wondered what was special about this oak but noticed that its acorns were quite  small, perhaps the size if the top joint of your little finger, while Northern Red Oaks’ acorns were twice as big,  thumb-tip size.

It’s interesting to note that almost exactly five years ago, I wrote about another Blue Jay acorn banquet.  The need, timing and place was the same, but the feeding behaviour a little different. The favoured tree then was a Shingle Oak (which this year has few acorns) and I noted that the jays seemed to prefer its smaller acorns too.

Today’s jays were able to accommodate  no more than four smallish acorns in their crops, good food for a good while I’m sure. A dozen years ago I watched and wrote about European Jays (a quite different species and much larger) similarly gulping down more and bigger acorns.