Jays

I've been quite surprised, after moving back into Hertfordshire, at the number of jays roaming around. Down in Dorset and up in Birmingham, a jay was a fairly rare sight for me; magpies and crows were much more common, and it was quite exciting to see a jay bouncing along a tree branch, or picking up leaves off the floor. Here though, while I keep expecting the terrible chak-chak-chak racket to be one of the former two birds, it normally always turns out that in fact it's a jay.

Image from RSPB.com

For all the commonness of them here, they still seem to be completely under the radar of most people- the first bird I tend to go for when the question's asked 'what's that big colourful bird?' is jay. I am always surprised by their unknown status by most when you take into account a jay's striking plumage; they must be one of the brightest large birds found in a garden, almost on a par with the green parakeets of London. I find these aren't quite as bold though, even if they are really very very noisy still!

Image from Wildlifephotographic.com

Jays are actually one of the biggest planters of acorns, collecting and planting up to 3000 acorns each in a month! This may be the reason for why I've been seeing so many around recently, as it's peak acorn time- and there are a lot of trees around where I live too, their preferred habitat. Jays, like all corvids, are clever birds. Although they don't use twig tools to get at food like crows do, a study by Cheke et al (2011) showed that they could actually learn to use tools if they wanted to. Multiple birds in the study learnt to use tool when they got an immediate reward, but less understood how to receive a reward when multiple different tools and stages were needed. Individual differences obviously had an effect. This was only a small study though, using five different birds, so conclusive evidence that jays can or cannot use tools to extract rewards shouldn't be taken from it. It can be said that they are very clever birds though!

Map from Birdforum.net

Jays are spread really widely across the world; the one we have in this country is the Eurasian jay (or just a jay, it's the original jay after other species in different countries are named). They're pretty birds, and I do enjoy seeing them, but they can make you jump with the noise they make!