Blue jays make the Arbor Day foundation look really bad

Treeaddict

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This is the second time I’ve seen a video talking about blue jays planting oaks. Apparently a single blue jay will bury 4500 acorns per year. They can only find 1 out of 4 during the winter. The essentially plant 3360 oaks per year!! They will take the acorns up to a mile away from the parent tree. Magnificent.
 
I didn't know they moved that many nuts. My boss was putting peanuts out for the squirrels. A week or two ago he put the nuts out, but had to go feed the horses, so I sat in the truck and waited. Blue jays came in and flew off with all the nuts. They'd take one away, then come back for more. No squirrels :^D

I found a white oak growing in one of my hollies while brushcutting yesterday. Not sure what I'm gonna do about that. It's too big to move. I'd like a white oak, but I like the holly there also. Makes my neighbor less visible. I'll probably let them battle it out and decide later. Dunno where the acorn came from. I don't know of any whites that are very close.

BTW, I got you another pin oak. It's in my drive in a coffee can. I did a better job extracting it, but it was still a little problematic. I'll see how it makes out, but I think it'll live.
 
Blue jays are clever specimens. They can imitate a large variety of calls and sometimes even make the calls of hawks or owls in order to get other birds to drop the food they've foraged for and fly off so they themselves can fly down and harvest the bounty from hard work done by other birds. They actually have expandable pouches on their bodies which they can fill with acorns and fly off with. They are well known for invading the nests of other birds so that they can consume the hatchlings. Not very nice! Other bird species, sometimes more than one species, will work as teams to combat these colorful aggressors.

During my last few years in Masschusetts, I spent a lot of time photographing birds and those highly active blue jays would confuse me regularly with their imitations of hawks. Eventually, I learned how to tell the difference.

Here is a website with some interesting facts and samples of them mimicking other bird species' calls.

@lxskllr As far as the white oak and the holly, you should definitely let them fight it out in nature's UFC octagon. It may be the slowest fight in history, but one is bound to win by knockout. Honestly, I bet you end up with a nice white oak tree that has holly around the base of its stem. It's a win win prospect! Imagine how nice that would look during Christmas time with that stunning tree synergy and peaceful coexistence!
 
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They also have a lot of interesting vocalizations. They can imitate prey to get other birds away from a food source for example. Very clever. They aren't quite as vocalized as other species, but they are in the upper echelon.

Interestingly, is has been discovered that our human language is similar to bird language. More on that here...

 
I've often commented when the ravens here are vocalizing that it sounds only a few degrees off actual speech. So expressive
 
Early one morning after a spring freshet in 1976, I beat feet up the trail to Russian Gulch Falls, with tripod and camera in hand. The falls are dry most months of the years, but if you catch them just right they're beautiful, and now was the time.

The trail up to the falls is a short 4 mile loop. On the way up I encountered an "unkindness" of Ravens clamoring about in the forest canopy surrounding me. To this day I have yet to see a larger gathering. It was early morning, trees still dripping, and the creek leading up to the falls was cascading.

The ravens, it appeared, were in a big clamor over my presence, and they stuck with me, clamoring on for a good part of that trail. Which was kind of unnerving consider their numbers. There must have been a hundred.

Eventually they lagged behind and the quietness of the forest returned. The falls were spectacular, spray and mists filling the air and ferns waving. You'll ever see Russian Gulch falls like that any other time of the year.

I was alone in the park that day and my encounter with that "unkindness" of Ravens still sticks in my mind today. "The Birds"

Stories of Corvids. Oh, I have a few. I hear they can live for 40 to 50 years.
 
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