A View From My Garden

December 14, 2005

I have had blue jays at the feeder! It is not only an excitement because these birds are an eastern species not commonly seen west of the Continental Divide until fairly recently, but also because they are so supremely confident, taking no quarter nor giving any, and because their brisk feather coat of blues, white and black is truly heart-lifting on a winter day. Even their raucous calls are welcome in the silence of snow. Because of all of this, I have been doing my best to keep them in this yard for winter.
I found raw Spanish peanuts at a bargain price and bought two packages to mix with the black oil sunflower seed (called BOSS in birder circles) along with a few raisins. I also got a large bag of chick feed, all cracked corn, and mixed some of that in also. None of this is expensive except for the peanuts and the raisins. My three blue jays eat peanuts and raisins.
The chickadees do like the plexiglass roofed platform feeder where this special mix goes. They come when the blue jays have finished the peanuts and raisins, are off to greener pastures. Chickadees have excellent table manners; they take one BOSS seed at a time to the mock orange nearby, or up into the maple, to eat it before returning for another. It is a wonder to me how a chickadee keeps his energy level so high in cold weather by picking only one seed at a time to eat; I have watched them do this by the hour. Chickadees will also eat peanuts, but the blue jays do not often leave any behind.
I have another trick up my sleeve, and that is called GORP in birding circles. It is a mixture of peanut butter and lard, with various other addictions. There are nearly as many recipes for GORP as there are individual back-yard bird feeders. Mine is relatively simple and I only put it out in winter, or after the starlings are gone. I add molasses and corn to my GORP, and anything else I have at hand that I think will go over with the flickers and other woodpeckers who regularly entertain us in winter. The blue jays should like this also, so today I will put out a good ration of fresh GORP and see what happens.
Blue jays, like crows, ravens and magpies, all members of the Corvid family, stash surplus food for lean times. People sometimes doubt the jay's ability to find his stashes, but I can assure you that he does. Many studies have been done of this incredible behavior, under suitably controlled field conditions (marking each stash with a marker that means nothing to the crow or jay, and then counting how many seeds are retrieved) and these birds have invariably proved themselves to be more than 80% accurate over the several months of winter. I suppose if I were motivated enough, I could learn to tell one clump of dead leaves from another, one stone, one piece of bark, but I doubt I would remember even half the spots after 2-3 months. Necessity is a relentless driver and we are talking, of course, about survival.
I have not seen the jays, now, since this early cold snap started. I imagine they have flown to a warmer, more sheltered spot than our valley. We have temperature inversions here and there are days when the mountain tops will be in sunlight and warmer then we are. Anyway, the jays know.