One day, Hope Brogunier was sitting on a bench in her Bangor yard watching a group of blue jays bathing in a birdbath. The blue jays would get in the birdbath and vibrate their wings in the water, causing droplets to fly all around the bird.
Several blue jays kept alternating turns at the birdbath; sometimes one would chase another off the birdbath. This was action enough to hold Hope’s attention for quite a while.
Suddenly all the jays started up a ruckus, calling out that brassy call of “jay, jay, jay” that gives them their name. Hope stood up to see what the matter was. A cat was staring at the birdbath.
The jays were so loud and unremitting that the cat turned around in retreat. One jay pursued the cat relentlessly until the cat ran under the porch.
Then the victorious jay perched on the back of the bench where Hope had been sitting and kept watch over the hole under the porch.
The amused Hope kept on watching this ruckus. After a while, the cat emerged from under the porch. The jays started their screeching once more — and the cat ran under the porch, vanquished.
Jays are amusing, adaptable and clever birds.
When Columbus came across the Atlantic Ocean, blue jays were birds of the Eastern forest of large oak and beech trees. Nuts from these trees were their standard food. Like squirrels, jays buried many acorns, one at a time. Many of those acorns sprouted and became oak trees.
You can see that behavior at the bird feeder. They swallow many sunflower seeds at one visit, caching them somewhere to eat them later.
Blue jays are versatile in their eating and in their habitat, adapting to living in city parks and suburbs and small woodlots since Columbus’ time.
Then, and now, they eat nuts, seeds, berries, fruit, corn, caterpillars, grubs, grasshoppers, other large insects, mice, suet and worms.
In spring and summer, if they spot the nest of a smaller bird, blue jays will snatch and eat the eggs or the baby birds.
Blue jays imitate hawk calls. They make many other sounds, too. And in nesting time, May and June, blue jays occasionally sing a very soft little song. Often when I’m puzzled by some odd birdcall, it turns out to be a blue jay.
In the fall, many blue jays migrate southward, but stay in the eastern United States. In October and November, flocks of jays are seen continually moving south. Some jays also stay in Maine for the winter.
For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.
On 11/21/08 at 10:26 AM,
Mainelyme wrote:
Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden
First of all please give my best to Hope Brogunier .
She's a very sweet person who wrote a beautiful personal letter to me 23 years ago when I was at perhaps the darkest days of my life.
I was both mentally and physically ill and the city was taking the house for taxes and driving me into the street with the able assistance of my former relatives.
Hope explained what I already knew that it wasn't my friends the citizens of Bangor who were doing it to me but, the city officials.
Of course, the main blame was the greedy jealous relatives who helped them right along.
Thank you, Hope.
Your message was and still is greatly appreciated.
On a lighter note.
I love Blue Jays. Like me they are colorful and noisy and fun to watch.
I bought a tree feeder at Bangor Hardware years ago telling the owner that I like Blue Jays when he told me that was what the feeder would attract.
He said they were noisy, scared the other birds away, and were notorious thieves.
I asked him him they would steal my lawnmower?
They didn't but, the seeds that fell on the lawn under the tree grew up into beautiful big sunflowers, and when the seeds were ripe they snapped off their stems, and suddenly disapeared. I assume it was they the Blue Jays who hauled the booty off, and not the beautiful Ruby Throated Pheasants that used to fly across the Penobscot from the Salmon Club in Brewer and land in my backyard, also.
The moral of this story is of course, "Be nice to the Blue Jays, the city officals and greedy jealous former relatives can take care of themselves!
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