Gobble, gobble...

...makes you think of the birds that will soon grace many tables on Thanksgiving Day, right? Sounds logical, but I'm not talking about those birds at all. I'm referring to the "greedy" Blue Jays in my backyard gobbling up sunflower seeds and peanuts like they are going out of style...

One of our backyard Blue Jays on the coconut feeder outside our kitchen window. He's not greedy. He's filling the gular pouch in his throat with sunflower seeds to hide in one of his many winter food caches. 

How can one bird eat that many seeds?
It can't! When you see Blue Jays downing one seed after another, watch closely, and you'll see they aren't eating the seeds at all, they are storing them in a pouch in their throats called a gular pouch. Blue Jays have a built-in carrying case called a gular pouch under their tongues. This expandable pouch extends down into their throats as far as the upper esophagus. In late summer and all through the fall Blue Jays and other birds, such as chickadees, nuthatches, and Tufted Titmice, start hoarding acorns and other seeds and nuts in winter caches. By storing their food, they can survive long, cold winters when their normal food sources freeze over or run out.

Click here for an older post with photos of a Blue Jay filling his gular pouch with peanuts, and learn how Blue Jays with their acorn caching ways repopulated areas with oak trees after the last glaciers retreated.

Click here for an earlier post on scatter-hoarding and winter food-caching birds in our area.

Gobble, gobble...it's fun to watch Blue Jays gobbling up sunflower seeds. They waste no time filling their gular pouches, then fly off to a winter cache, deposit them, and come back for more.

Blue Jays behaving badly (or is it just fall migration?)...
While most of the red, yellow and gold leaves of autumn have fallen from the trees and faded away, it's still fall, and Blue Jays are still out there doing their autumn antics. My mom called a few weeks ago reporting 17 Blue Jays were in her backyard behaving badly. They were impersonating hawks, stealing seed, frightening the titmice, and taking over every feeder in their yard...but, she loved it! It's very exciting to have a marauding band of migrating Blue Jays in your yard, especially when you live in the city! She wanted to know what was going on, so I let her know in autumn, some northern Blue Jays take to the wing and migrate south, while others stay put. When they migrate, they form large groups of what really do look like marauding bands, and when a flock lands in your backyard, watch out. They will raid all of your feeders and plunder till nothing remains. Then they will be gone in a flash, not to return.

Click here for a pdf of a paper by Paul A. Stewart in North American Bird Bander, July-Sep. 1982, titled, "Migration of Blue Jays in Eastern North America," pgs 107 - 112. Stewart analyzes banding and recovery records to identify the birds' migratory movements, showing Blue Jays are partly migratory because some groups stay throughout the year, and of those that do migrate, not all return to their same nesting grounds. Stewart includes maps that show the locations of direct recoveries of banded migratory birds.

This fellow is not part of a marauding band. He's just a regular at the Coconut Cafe outside our kitchen window. 

...put the blue in the coconut and shake it all up. 

Gobble up those sunflower seeds Ol' Blue and secret them off to your winter food cache. Your scatter-hoarding will get you through the winter, plus it's great for seed dispersal!

A chickadee gathers seeds on an early autumn afternoon...

...cool temps and a gentle breeze seemed to push me down the Little Miami Trail this afternoon, and I was thankful to be out under the towering sycamores and old oaks and buckeyes once again. Confetti yellow leaves were starting to fall in celebration of the new season, but mostly green was holding on in a stubborn (and futile) attempt to stall autumn. Chickadees were hard at work everywhere gleaning twigs and leaves for insects to eat, but they were also looking for seeds to add to their winter food caches for the long winter ahead...

A Carolina Chickadee was busy gleaning insects from brush along the trail. He was also plucking seeds from the spent flower heads. Now and then he would fly off, no doubt to hide the seeds in one of his winter food caches.  

Click here for an older post called "Titmice and chickadees cache food for winter survival" to read more about this unique ability. Chickadees have larger spatial memories than non-caching birds, and the extra brain cells (which become more numerous during the autumn) help them keep track of the seeds they hide. For an article from Lehigh University that explains how this works in a little more detail, click here. In the article, Colin Saldanha talks about how the bird's hippocampus expands by about 30% in autumn due to the creation of new nerve cells. In the spring, the chickadee's hippocampus returns to normal size.

Chickadees work hard in autumn to gather and store seeds and nuts in winter food caches to help them survive the long, cold, and grey (yikes!) winter. White-breasted Nuthatches, Blue Jays, and Tufted Titmice also stash food for the winter. 

Green is still king along the Little Miami Trail, but it better get ready to abdicate the throne, because yellow, gold, and red are ready to take over!

I wonder if they dipped into their winter food stores this week…

There are several types of birds who stash food in the autumn, preparing for the harsh winter ahead. These birds have larger spatial memories than non-caching birds, which help them keep track of the position of objects in space. In our area, food-caching birds are White-breasted Nuthatches, Blue Jays, Tufted Titmice and chickadees.

In autumn nuthatches harvest and store hundreds of 

seeds throughout their territory using each hiding place 

only once. They hide seeds behind bark, in cracks and 

crevices of tree trunks, or in knotholes. Sometimes, they 

even cover the seeds with moss or lichens.

By spreading their food around, a behavior that’s called 

scatter-hoarding, food-caching birds help guarantee 

their survival by making it less likely their entire 

food stash will be raided by other birds. 

Blue Jays harvest several thousand acorns each fall 

and bury them in the ground. Any acorns the Blue Jays 

don’t eat sprout into saplings, so squirrels aren’t 

the only ones important to seed dispersal.

To read more about seed-caching birds, get Secret Lives of Common Birds, Enjoying Bird Behavior Through the Seasons, by Marie Read. This book has a lot of interesting bird behavior tid-bits and very beautiful photos.