Blue Jays are such feisty, clever birds and aren’t afraid of humans. In fact, they’re one of the most intelligent birds you’ll see in your backyard.
They’re members of the corvid family, including other jay species such as Steller’s Jays, ravens, crows, and magpies.
Blue Jays Remember Human Faces
Studies show Blue Jays remember human faces, and if the birds take an interest in you, they might follow you around. But, unfortunately, we feel like the jays are always sizing us up and deciding if they can trust us.
So how do you get a Blue Jay to trust you?
Earning a Blue Jay’s Trust
-Offer Their Favorite Foods
You earn a Blue Jay’s trust by offering their favorite foods (sunflower, corn, peanuts) on large feeding platforms and open feeders.
-Provide Water
And don’t forget to provide them with a consistent water source for drinking and bathing.
-Offer Plenty of Cover
Offer plenty of native trees to provide cover.
Our Blue Jays enjoy sitting in the fruit trees in camouflage, observing the other birds visiting “their” feeders. But, then, they enjoy darting out and trying to scare our migratory visitors, like the Baltimore Orioles.
But the jays fail every time. These long-distance flyers are not easily rattled. So the jay’s harsh, jeering jaay or jay-jay calls have little or no impact.
So they decide to sit and watch the humans instead.
-Don’t Spray Chemicals
And most important of all, please don’t use insecticides in your yard. Or any product that ends with “icide” in its name.
These products include herbicide, rodenticide, parasiticide, pesticide, fungicide, and vermicide. They pose a dangerous threat to your backyard nature sanctuary.
If you’re using chemical insecticides to kill ants, you may be harming the birds that visit your yard. Some chemicals used in ant poisons are highly toxic to birds, so let the birds be your natural insect control.
Have Fun with Your Blue Jays
Next time you offer peanuts in your platform feeder, count how many whole peanuts the jay can store in its crop.
Our backyard Blue Jay record is 11. Though we have to admit, it looked like the bird was struggling to get airborne.
Take time out to enjoy these clever birds. They might teach you a thing or two.
Kill those fuckin bastards,but first torture them!!!!
Someone should track this guy’s presence online. Someone who thinks about torture during a discussion of living beings isn’t amusing, isn’t clever, isn’t interesting for any reason other than to cause people of some intelligence to be aware of his inability to think or feel, & how that might spill over into affecting the world outside his debilitated head.
John, your an idiot!
Thank you for the information. We have lots of Blue Jays. My husband feeds them whole peanuts. When he’s late, boy they swak.
I am friends with our scrub jays. They talk to me, remind me to pu5 out some peanuts,