Pile Driving Blue Jays

Two years ago I installed upon our back deck a pair of squirrel feeders. Nice contraptions made of metal (wood-made ones supposedly promote gnawing and we sure don’t want that!), which I fill with in-the-shell peanuts each and every day. The peanuts aren’t cheap, but they aren’t uber expensive either. A 25-pound box costs, with tax, about $28 and the box lasts three weeks at most.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t completely altruistic of me. I do enjoy helping the wildlife, but I’m equally motivated by providing the cats something to watch. The cats just love (and I do mean love) watching the squirrels, the birds (we have bird feeders too) and the chipmunks, who also love to eat the peanuts. The cats can sit at the sliding glass door for hours and enjoy the show of hopping birds, tail-twitching squirrels and scampering chipmunks. Damn if it isn’t great!

But there has been a darker side to this programme of wildlife feeding/cat porn. The squirrel feeders include openings which are backed by clear plastic, thus making it possible for the squirrels and chipmunks to see the peanuts. But this winter I noticed that the clear plastic was frequently being broken, which was both new and, I thought, unusual. How and/or why would the squirrels or chipmunks be breaking the plastic? Then one day I noticed a blue jay pounding the living shit out of the clear plastic and breaking it.

Huh?

A blue jay wanted at the peanuts? “Odd,” thought I. I didn’t know they even liked peanuts, but I could understand that if they did they would feel so inclined to break the plastic to be able to get to the peanuts, where the squirrels and chipmunks just lift the lid. Other than being irritated that they were breaking the plastic I didn’t think much about it. To be frank I thought it was just some errant blue jay with some preoccupation with the peanuts. But I was wrong.

In the past few weeks the number of blue jays visiting our back deck, and the squirrel feeders in particular, has increased rather dramatically. Instead of a few showing up during the course of the day I’ve seen maybe seven or eight separate blue jays coming to visit the squirrel feeder. And this certainly makes me happy as the blue jay is my most favourite bird. I love both its look and song very much. But I’m not particularly interested in the blue jay stealing these peanuts! However, this morning I saw something unusual, which caused me to take action!

As I sat upon the couch in the t.v. room this morning I had the opportunity to watch a blue jay land upon the west lawn. He had a peanut in his bill and upon lighting on the ground he set to pile driving the poor peanut into the soil. “What?!” I said aloud as I watched him beat the living shit out of the peanut. When he was satisfied that the peanut was properly buried he hopped around, collecting bits of dried leaves, which he promptly used to cover the spot where he buried the peanut.

Seeing this I began watching some of the other blue jays who were visiting the squirrel feeder. A number of them would grab a peanut, fly off into some other part of the back yard (or my neighbor’s back yard) and proceed to pile drive their peanut as well.

This was too much. I needed information so I phoned my local Audubon society to which I am a member. I asked to speak to their resident blue jay expert and this kind and informative young man explained to me that indeed, blue jays LOVE peanuts. I couldn’t put out a more powerful blue jay attracting food than peanuts according to him. He also confirmed that that they love to cache food in all sorts of places, including burying in the ground.

He further explained that blue jays are highly intelligent, very social (with other blue jays) and rather skittish of humans, which I had already noticed via my efforts to photograph them (quite unsuccessfully). But the important thing for me is that I now know and understood that these peanut-stealing blue jays are not just carrying them off for no reason, but because they love to eat them. It feels good to know that I’m helping yet another woodland creature.