Me: Why do people always use the words raucous and jeering to describe blue jays? They use such a variety of calls to communicate with each other.

Other Person: Well, they are not exactly melodious.

Me: I feed them peanuts in winter. Someone I know shoots the blue jays out of his bird feeder with a rifle. That’s so mean.

Other Person: Blue jays are mean to other birds.

Me: I’ve never seen it. In my yard, all of the birds get along very nicely.

Other Person: They plunder robins’ nests and kill the young.

Me: Oh.

(Brief silence) Me: Are you sure?

Other Person: Yes. They bite the baby robins’ heads off.

Later, I Google blue jays. Whatever.

Blue jays are forest dwellers. They nest in tall coniferous trees. When they wake up, they quickly become bored and head into town, jeering raucously, to see what everyone else is up to.

They’re less shy and elusive than you might expect forest dwellers to be. They seem more like city dwellers. I think they originally hail from New York City, or maybe Bayonne. They came up North on a hunting trip, liked the scenery and figured what the hay, let’s stay here. Just run the dumb pine siskins out of these conifers–easy cruising distance from some bird feeders–and we got it made.

If jays were humans, they’d be doing rude things like honking their horns and yelling at you out the window. They are pretty much type A personalities. They’d be littering and taking up all the parking spaces. Their car alarms would be going off like mad and they’d be saying, “So? Sue me.”

I like blue jays. My old friend Herb thinks this is due to one of the flaws he has perceived in my character, to wit, my appreciation of upstarts and trouble makers. I find them amusing. My friend Charlene attributes my friendship with Herb to this very trait.

After a brief period of resistance, my mother came to enjoy watching the blue jays and squirrels commandeer her bird feeder. The squirrels in my yard seem less intelligent and purposeful than the ones at my mother’s feeder in Ann Arbor, but then they are a different kind of squirrel, and they don’t have the advantages of the University of Michigan campus. They scamper around the yard, occasionally digging up a few crocus bulbs, but seldom get anywhere near the peanuts.

The blue jays, on the other hand, are very capable, appearing out of thin air as soon as I start throwing peanuts–in the shell, unsalted–out the window. To me, all blue jays look alike. I can tell them apart, though, by the way they act.

One picks up peanuts in its beak one by one, weighing and comparing.

Another jay won’t fly off until it has two peanuts in its beak. Over time, this bird has learned to select a smaller peanut first, ramming it as far down its throat as possible. Then it stabs another, larger, peanut with its beak, which usually takes several tries. I don’t know that either of these birds gets any more food than the thoughtless jays who repeatedly fly in, grab and fly away again in helter skelter fashion, but I admire their perfectionism.

The jays approach tree by tree, branch by branch, swooping down by turn, although sometimes several will be on the porch roof at one time. One icy morning, every jay that touched down went sliding across the roof. They didn’t seem to mind.

One or two bluster at incoming competitors, flapping up in the air and chest-bumping other peanut foragers. One jay chases other birds around with a peanut in its beak. They take off in apparent alarm, then come right back.

The biggest peanuts disappear first, but eventually every one will be gone. The jays retire to trees to crack the shells and eat.

Once, by a serendipitous chance, a blue jay dropped a peanut and a squirrel got ahold of it. I watched the squirrel hop over to a snow bank, the blue jay hopping along right behind. No sooner had the squirrel buried its prize and scurried away than the jay dug it out and carried it off.

I think if Herb watched blue jays instead of his adorable humming birds–who are mean too, by the way–he might learn something.

Have a good week!