With a reputation for wreaking havoc on other songbird nests, but with vivid plumage that’s exciting to see, blue jays have a love-hate relationship with bird enthusiasts. Colorful, noisy jays are members of the same family as magpies, crows, and ravens. We take a look at three jays from this rambunctious family found in Texas—blue jays, green jays, and scrub jays.
Blue Jays
Raucous and rowdy, blue jays descend on backyard feeders like boisterous tailgaters before a football game. Found year-round in the eastern half of Texas, blue jays have expanded their range westward by relying on human settlements. Despite their vivid display of brilliant blue feathers, blue jays are not always a welcomed sight. Indeed, those who manage for native songbirds for their Texas wildlife exemption may not appreciate the arrival of blue jays no matter how dazzling their feathers. Along with insects, fruits, nuts, and seeds, blue jays are known to eat the eggs and young of other birds—including other songbirds. But is their bad reputation deserved? Per All About Birds: “In an extensive study of blue jay feeding habits, only 1% of jays had evidence of eggs or birds in their stomachs. Most of their diet was composed of insects and nuts.”
As a less gruesome point of interest, blue jays are among the few birds that store food for later use. They have an expandable pouch in their esophagus where they can carry nuts to their cache. From Audubon’s Slings and Arrows: Why Birders Love to Hate Blue Jays: “The expandable throat and esophagus of a blue jay can hold up to five pin oak acorns or three larger ones from white oaks, and the bird typically collects one more nut in its bill before departing.”
According to 8 Fun Facts About Blue Jays Storing Food for the Winter: “In one research study, 50 blue jays were observed selecting and caching 150,000 acorns over a period of 28 days. Each bird cached a total of 3,000 acorns by selecting and hiding an average of 107 acorns per day.” After burying the nuts, jays may forget to retrieve them, allowing them to grow into trees. To that end, blue jays may have been responsible for the “rapid northward dispersal of oaks after the Ice Age.”
Mated pairs of blue jays remain together all year. Indeed, blue jays are known for their tight family bonds and “often travel in noisy family groups in late summer and fall”—the tailgaters of the bird world. Blue jays are able to emulate the call of hawks to frighten other birds and groups of blue jays will attack owls which are considered a threat. Owls hunt at night, seeking sleeping birds including blue jays.
Green Jays
Less common than blue jays in Texas, but no less spectacular in plumage—perhaps, even more so—are green jays. Also known as Rio Grande jays, these jays can be found in southernmost Texas. As described by the Texas Breeding Bird Atlas, green jays breed “almost exclusively in extreme southern Texas.” The sighting of a green jay is a thrill because, as described by The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, “they have personalities as bold as their colors.” (For recent photos, see the National Butterfly Center tweet here.) Green jays are a tropical sight to behold—a radiant green body and wings are set off by a blue head with black markings and a bluish-green tail. According to All About Birds, “the oldest recorded green jay was at least 11 years, 7 months old, and lived in Texas.”
For those birders who travel to far south Texas to catch a glimpse of a green jay, don’t lose faith if at first you don’t succeed. As described by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department:
“Any human invasion quickly brings them out of the dense cover to investigate. They may scream at the person for a while before disappearing silently into the brush. The green jay is skillful at staying concealed when stalked, but often ironically gives itself away once the hunt is over. When the stalker turns to leave, several of the jays may scream at it and some may even come to the edge of the brush to look the intruder over.”
Scrub Jays
There are four species of scrub jays in the U.S., only one of which resides in Texas—Woodhouse’s scrub jay. Two subspecies of this jay are found in Texas, one in the Edwards Plateau and the other ranging from the Trans-Pecos north. Scrub jays prefer “a habitat of scrubby juniper or cedar and oak.” Before 1950, the scrub jay was unknown in the Austin area but, thanks to ranchers clearing cedar from their land in the 1940s and 1950s, the scrub-jay moved its range to cedar brakes west of Austin. Unlike their flashier cousins, the scrub jay has a more muted, dusty blue color palette.
Image by Megan Zopf from Pixabay
