For a while I was putting out dry cat food for a local stray. I got used to seeing squirrels coming around, but a few times I saw a blue jay helping himself to the cat food.
I’m popular with the local Scrub Jay corvid crew (Blue Jays with less impressive hats). I think they’ve gone past liking me into the cat-like entitlement phase. They come in to my home office and squawk at me. They fly in one window and out the opposite one rather than going to the trouble of flying around the house. If I leave the bag of peanuts open, I will invariably find one of those fat bastards trapped in it nd have to fish them out.
I was just trying to be nice to the crows to see what presents they bring. Doesn’t occur to the jays to reciprocate at all.
Well, see you gave them stuff first - so why should they exert themselves? Smug little opportunists…
I don’t know how you get to be one of the lucky people the corvids decide to court first, but there are people who get presents from them.
Our jays are only occasionally assholes around the feeder. We did have a robin asshole, for a few days he’d eat his fill and then just camp out by the feeder and chase other birds away. Every time I saw it, I chased him away, and eventually he disappeared.
I have three cats and it would thrill me to see one get their assed handed to them by a bird. Because they really deserve it…
Not so many blue jays around here since I lost the old red oak tree.
Well, where was the last place you saw the tree? That’s usually the best way to find lost items.
Same here. I feel like I’ll go a year or so without seeing one, think to myself that I never see any, then see one the next day. Then not see any again.
We had one visiting our feeder last year, though. The other birds cleared out except for a woodpecker who would also visit. The two would alternate chasing the other off, eating for a few moments until the other returned and repeating the cycle.
My favorite bit of bird feeder royalty here are the mourning doves. They don’t try to drive off the others with threat displays or anything, they just come in and the others move before they have a mourning dove on top of them. It’s as though the other birds don’t exist to them at all.
One day I came home from work and it was gone!
I like to think it walked off in search of an entwife.
Did you think to tie a big yellow ribbon on it? That might help you spot it.
I know we’re Chicagoland neighbors and it really is like that, specifically at my home. I do frequently see jays other places and it was uncanny how many I saw (while whizzing past on the interstate as a passenger) a few weeks ago during a drive through Indiana and Ohio. Dozens.
I had a snake sighting in my yard in May which is even less common but I guess steady with one about every two or three years since I moved in 15 years ago. De Kay’s brown snakes, I think.