Bluejays!

[rain_gryphon]

I now have full-time Bluejays. Rather a quantity of them, in fact, at least three, and perhaps as many as five. Their colours are already looking muted, more of a dusty greyish-blue than anything. They seem to have replaced the Grackles at the peanut tray. All of the feeders are less busy than at the peak season, given that there's not that overwhelming pressure to find food for the nestlings. Still, I'm offering free food, and it's easy to get, which has some appeal regardless. I've seen a couple of the Jays now pop down to get a peanut, peck it apart, then go around the lawn hunting bugs for a while before coming back for another peanut. The Sparrows, of course, are happy with the seed tube - having all the babies grown up frees them from bug-hunting, and they can stuff themselves with millet and then just enjoy the sunshine.

I really need to build a winter shelter. I also should probably make a Starling box or two, for the Spring, especially if we're going to have Jays around. And the Sparrow boxes need cleaning out and sterilizing.

Remarkably colourful scene, with a Cardinal, the Jays, and a Red-bellied Woodpecker all there. It looks like the picture on a bag of birdseed.

Comments

[thewayne]

We get a somewhat special blue jay up here, a Stellar Jay, that I photographed in 2017. Unfortunately I apparently loaded the picture through Dropbox and the link broke, so I'm going to have to try and fix it later.

I haven't seen much of them this year (I did see a few), but with the crane migration being off last year, I wonder if their pattern changed.

[rain_gryphon]

Yeah, the Jays are new. I had like one or two poking around this spring (I'm pretty sure they ate the Cardinals' babies), but now there're a bunch of them. Things change.

[thewayne]

I am by no means a birder, but I was listening to last week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and their guest was the national outreach coordinator for the Audubon Society. Very interesting. He said the roadrunner is a very nasty bird, and is also one for eating other birds including a particularly nasty bird whose name escapes me. Quite an interview.