Tonight there’s a full moon, and there will be a second full
moon this month on August 31. This, according to most definitions, makes that
one a blue moon. Since 1987, I’ve been naming any month with a blue moon
National Blue Jay Awareness month.
It has come to my attention over the years
that some people disapprove of Blue Jays. We humans have a tendency to despise
those creatures most like ourselves, and Blue Jays fit the bill with their
intelligence, spunkiness, tight family bonds, loudness, and ability to exploit
a great many situations for their personal benefit. This month, I’ll focus several
special programs on my beloved Blue Jays, but will also have a few about their
blue relatives, such as the three scrub-jays, the Mexican Jay, and the
Steller’s Jay, since they, too, can legitimately be called blue jays.
As much as I love chickadees, I’ve always considered Blue
Jays to be Nature’s Perfect Bird. My first experience with them was when I was
a very little girl and my Chicago family took a vacation in Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin. A Blue Jay squawking up in a tree caught my eye when it was in full
sunlight, and it was the most perfect vision I’d ever had. I recognized it from
The Little Golden Stamp Book of Birds, which my beloved Grandpa had given me,
and the real thing was even prettier than its shiny image on the big Blue Jay
stamp. This would have been in the 1950s. I didn’t see another Blue Jay until I became a birder in 1975.
The first baby bird I successfully raised was in 1979, when
I rescued one out of a golden retriever’s mouth in Madison, Wisconsin.
This was
before I knew about the Migratory Bird Act. I had absolutely no training in
raising baby birds and was terrified of screwing up because this little bird
looked at me with such bright and trusting eyes. Fortunately, I had a dear
friend in the US Fish and Wildlife Service who’d had a pet magpie that he’d
raised from a tiny nestling back when he lived in the West and there was still
a bounty on magpies. He gave me excellent suggestions on what to feed the
little guy and little hints like of course I didn’t need to get up in the
middle of the night to feed it because parent birds can’t see in the dark to
find insects and other food items for their young, so baby birds of course can
go the night without eating. I probably called him 30 times that summer, and he
was as happy as me that the little jay thrived and ultimately became wild. I
was so sad when he disappeared in the fall. I never saw him again, though the
following spring while Russ and I were out of town, our neighbor saw him pecking on our apartment windows and he
alighted on her lawn chair while she was sunbathing and stared at her
quizzically.
Blue Jay populations are strong. We can find them in just
about any forest type and in established neighborhoods just about anywhere, but
they are most strongly associated with oak trees. They are aces at selecting
the most fertile acorns. Those they don’t eat immediately they tuck into the
ground and cover with a leaf. Their extraordinary spatial memory allows them to
retrieve them later, but because they plant so many, a great many grow up to
become oak trees. Indeed, Blue Jays are credited with literally planting oak
forests as glaciers receded. Birches, maples, and other wind-borne seeds didn’t
have a chance to stay abreast of acorns, thanks to Blue Jays flying about
caching them.
What other bird on the planet combines so much beauty,
intelligence, and fun in a three-ounce package, and plants oak forests to boot?
Yep. Blue Jays are Nature’s Perfect Bird.
