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The blue jay’s inventiveness is one of its most fascinating characteristics. According to one study, blue jays kept in a University of Massachusetts lab were able to create and use a tool for gathering food. Initially, a lone jay used the newspaper pieces that lined the cage’s bottom to scoop up food pellets that were otherwise out of its reach with its beak. The bird was able to successfully use a paper clip, plastic bag tie, feather, and straw grass as tools to gather the food pellet that was out of reach. Six of the eight blue jays were able to use tools to gather food in the same way when the researchers gave them the same materials as the other jays in the colony. Fascinating!.
Blue jays can mimic the calls of other birds and have been observed to do so. Two such instances are reported by Lofton and Clench, in Florida and Texas, respectively. In every instance, a blue jay attempted to deceive other birds into parting with their food by mimicking a red-shouldered hawk. The blue jay imitated the hawk’s cry while perched next to a feeding bird. After hearing the call, the bird feeder assumed a hawk was close by and took off. The blue jay then dove to devour the food the bird had left behind. It’s unclear if Jays evolved this special talent primarily to alert others to the presence of hawks nearby or just as a deceitful tool. Either way, it is very clever.
The blue jay, like all members of the corvid family (which includes crows and ravens), has an intricate social structure. Still, it’s rather easy compared to other New Word Jays. Since most blue jays are monogamous, as Racine and Thompson point out, the breeding pair serves as the foundation of the social structure. But because blue jays are not a territorial species, it is usual to see several pairs of jays using the same feeding area. Strangely enough, as the breeding season draws to a close in late summer, blue jays will gather in big flocks. Over the winter, a large number of jays from the northern US will migrate south. Nonetheless, a small number of people remain all year round. Blue jays in a central Massachusetts bird sanctuary form stable groups in the winter, according to research by Racine and Thompson. Over several winters, banded jays visited the same feeding station again. Additionally, known banded jays’ progeny visited the same feeding station once more. According to Racine and Thompson, group bonding goes beyond simple feeding habits. The same jays returned to the original spot even with different feeding stations. The migratory patterns on blue jays are not well understood. Stewart discovered that there is no single characteristic that determines which blue jays migrate south and which remain in their nesting region after conducting a meta-analysis of over 8,000 recaptured blue jays at banding stations along the Atlantic Flyway (Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York). As he talks about, there is disagreement over the blue jay’s migration pattern. There is a dispute among ornithologists regarding the migration rates of younger and older jays. Some argue that younger jays migrate more frequently in order to increase their chances of finding food during the winter.
Squirrels are usually associated with gathering and storing nuts. Apparently, birds do this too. Johnson discusses the blue jay’s active role in distributing nuts. According to his conservative estimate, he mentions that between 5% and 6% of a nut crop might be distributed by jays. As a matter of fact, numerous studies attribute the widespread dispersal of specific beech trees following the glacial era in the eastern United States to the blue jay. When food is scarce, blue jays regularly gather nuts and acorns and store them underground. A single jay may cache many thousand nuts each year. When the nuts sprout and grow, jays will forget about the food they stored, increasing the number of trees by several hundred meters annually. Among the birds that engage in this activity, blue jays are unique in that they will carry the nuts over several thousand meters!
In a breeding pair, males are almost always the dominant member. In a four-year study, Tarvin and Wolfendon E2%80%99 examined the dominance behavior of blue jays in south-central Florida and discovered that, of 316 interactions between males and females, less than 1% were won by the female. Males tend to have larger bodies than females, and this physical difference may be the cause of their consistent success. But the authors pointed out that in this study, the males were only 5% larger in the majority of the measured characteristics. They attribute the dominance to the males more aggressive nature. In general, men are more likely to engage in interactions It’s interesting to note that males became noticeably less aggressive and females became more aggressive right before breeding season (March). The authors explain this by referring to “nesting phenology” and a change in energy requirements because females had to eat more nutrients during the nesting season. However, this did not change the dominance, and men continued to be superior to women. However, from my window, it is very difficult for me to observe this hierarchy because, up close, male and female blue jays have the same appearance. In fact, unless they examine the birds closely, many expert ornithologists are unable to distinguish between them!
FAQ
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