What a treat to observe the half dozen or so Blue Jays zooming around the garden, caching acorns for the winter. They’d perch with nut in beak, carefully eyeing the ground for an ideal spot. Once located, the Jay would swoop down. I didn’t want to move from my perch and risk being noticed so I couldn’t see exactly how they were hiding the acorn but when they resurfaced, no nut!
Some interesting notes about Blue Jays – Research has shown Blue Jays making over 1,000 trips in one day to hide food. They mainly select undamaged nuts that are viable, meaning if the bird does not recover the nut, it will grow. The record a Blue jay traveled to hide food is 2.5 miles. This behavior has greatly helped helped the the range of expansion of oak trees and now over 11 species of oaks are dependent upon Blue Jay dispersal of acorns. The rapid expansion of oaks after the ice age may be a result of the northern transport of acorns by Blue Jays.
