Vibrant in both colour and personality, Jays are an exciting visitor to a backyard. While Blue Jays are known for their loud personalities, their clownish antics are very entertaining to watch, especially as they tend to move around in groups, especially in the autumn, and their social behaviour is quite dynamic.

Jays will cache seeds and nuts to retrieve later, making repeated trips to feeders to gather food and hide it in a safe spot. They tend to select only undamaged nuts for caching, and seem to prefer seeds and nuts in shells

What Do They Look Like?

The Blue Jay is a large crested songbird whose appearance is familiar to many. With its perky crest; blue, white and black plumage, and boisterous, noisy calls, it's generally not a difficult bird to spot! The brightly coloured top plumage is balanced by white or gray underneath, and it sports a long rounded tail. A good sized bird, they are larger than the American Robin, but smaller than your average Crow. Male and female Blue Jays both have similar plumage, as do the juveniles. No seasonal plumage changes.

Do They Migrate?

Blue Jays are known to occasionally migrate, but the phenomenon is not well understood.

 

Foods

The Blue Jay will happily utilize backyard feeders within their ranges, partaking almost any kind of food being offered (seed, suet, Bark Butter™, etc).

        

      

Feeders

          

 

Birdbaths (Water)

Water is essential to all birds and providing a bird bath means they don’t have to travel great distances to find water. Water in a bird bath should be cleaned regularly as birds defecate, leave bits of food and feathers in the bath, not to mention leaves and other items that can end up in a bath. In the winter, heated birdbaths provide an excellent place for birds to drink. During the warmer months the WBU Water Wigglers create moving water in your birdbath, making the bath even more attractive to birds. 

 

Nesting

Nests in trees and bushes. 

The Blue Jays builds their nests in the crotch or thick outer branches of a deciduous or coniferous tree, usually 10-25 feet above the ground. Male and female both gather materials and build the nest, but on average male does more gathering and female more building.

 

Fun Facts

• Blue Jays are often chastised for their known practice of eating eggs and nestlings of other birds. But extensive research has proven this to be a very rare occurrence, with only 1% of the study population showing any evidence of this behavior.
• The rapid northward dispersal of oaks after the Ice Age may have resulted from the northern transport of acorns by jays.
• For more information visit this great resource: Lab of Ornithology at Cornell - All About Birds - Blue Jay