Lifestyles

My blue jay problem

By BILL CHAISSON
Of a Feather
For the first time in my life I am not engaged in a ground and air war with squirrels at the feeder station. A few years of banner crops for tree mast has caused the population of gray squirrels in particular — as nearly everyone noticed — to swell to unsavory proportions and then crash. I now go for days without seeing a squirrel, which is just weird. But I feel like I have Poland’s historical problem; if Germany isn’t being aggressive, then Russia is. At the feeder station this winter I haven’t seen a single squirrel — gray or red — but I have been invaded by an army of blue jays.

I don’t hate blue jays, but it is somewhat difficult to love them. One thing that I keep in mind is that they are quite beautiful. Which is easy to forget because they are so common. This species is missing from only one of the 178 “priority blocks” in the “Atlas of Breeding Birds of New Hampshire” (1994, ed. Carol R. Foss) and that single location is very high in the White Mountains. The species not just ubiquitous — it is present in all of the priority blocks of “The Atlas of Vermont Breeding Birds” (1985; eds. Sarah B. Laughlin and Douglas P. Kibbe) and in 5,154 out a possible 5,335 blocks in “The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State” (2008; eds, Kevin J. McGowan and Kimberly Corwin) — but it is also highly visible. Not only, at 11 inches long, is it large — there are smaller owl species — but it is often seen flying slowly across open spaces in its distinct manner. A blue jay’s course is relatively straight, but their wingbeats are slow and their progress sluggish; they don’t veer or glide until they are about to perch. It is easy to get a good look at a blue jay.

The closer you look, the more you realize just how intricate are the patterns of its plumage. For example, it is easy to notice the black “necklace” that extends from behind a jay’s eye and loops down and across its chest but look at the fine points of this feature. There is a sort of blue shadow above the black across the chest. And the boundary between the black and the white areas has a slightly different geometry in each bird, particularly in the auriculars (cheeks).

Sibley illustrates dark and pale adults in his guidebook. The dark birds are more common in the far northern part of the distribution, which extends up into the southern part of the taiga in central Canada. On these birds the blue shadow above the necklace extends much farther up the neck.

The drama of a blue jay’s plumage is most apparent when it flies. The contrasting blue and white is striking. They are blue above from the top of their crested heads to the tip of their long tails. But they have a single bold white wing bar, the trailing edges of the inner half of their secondary feathers are white, as are the tips of all but the central tail feathers. Throw in some thin black bars on the tail and some delicate black edging to the primary and second feathers and you have one flashy bird.

Like anything you see often though, you get used to looking at blue jays and you stop seeing how spectacular they are. This phenomenon was brought home to me when I was walking in a city park in Halifax, Nova Scotia with a British colleague who happened to be a “twitcher.” When we spotted the usual complement of robins (Turdus migratorius) hopping around on the lawns, he went ape. English blackbirds (Turdus merula) are shaped exactly like robins but are coal black throughout. So, in contrast, our robin, with its brick-red chest and odd three-part eye ring had my Old-World friend practically jumping up and down with excitement. (In addition, maritime robins have dark black heads versus dark gray backs and wings, a regional variation that added to the frisson.)

A few years later, when I moved out to California and found Steller’s jays everywhere instead of blue jays, I had cause to emulate Graham’s delirium. When I remarked upon the beauty of these common backyard birds, Californians just looked at me and shrugged.

For all their good looks, blue jays are thugs. They have made a complete mess of my feeder station and are scaring off the other birds. On a bad day I have counted eight of these blue, black and white criminals stalking around my platform feeder, throwing seed all over the place, harassing other birds and one another. In their ceaseless quest for their favorite types of seed — sunflower and corn — these delinquents have also shoveled half the volume of my bin feeder onto the ground.

This gang seems to be made up of two pairs plus their nearly grown young. Some of the birds are slightly smaller, have shorter crests and tails, and have a more disordered pattern of white on their wings when they are folded onto their backs. The New Hampshire atlas notes that these family groups tend to stay together through September, but we seem to have a “failure to launch” situation in my neighborhood.

During the breeding season, which begins in March or April, blue jays become quiet and secretive, only springing to life if you happen to get close to their nest. They don’t really defend a territory, but they can occasionally be heard warbling a soft, surprising melodious song to each other near the nest. It is rather like finding out that your uncle, the career criminal, has a nice tenor voice.

I have no idea what to do about the mob of blue jays at my feeders. The juncos, chickadees, and cardinals are making themselves relatively scarce and seem harried and skittish when they are present. I haven’t seen a single tree sparrow, never mind any winter finches. Maybe it is just this mild winter we’re having, but I think it’s the jays.

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