365 days later Ol' Blue is stealing peanuts from Red...and is still trying to get me to rename the blog...

…and that’s just fine because he’s fun to watch, and really he’s just doing his job. After all, Ol' Blue is a bird set up for seed dispersal. He has a built-in carrying case called a gular pouch located under his tongue. This expandable sac extends down into his throat as far as the upper esophagus. Blue’s gular pouch gets quite a workout around our house! As soon as I stock the peanut feeder the Blue Jays start arriving. One, two, three…sometimes up to 15 at a time will perch in the big Ash Tree and take turns swooping in for a peanut, often returning to their original perch to hatch out the peanut and slip it into their gular pouches. It’s fun to watch their throats grow!

Blue sitting in our Ash Tree with his first peanut of the morning.

...he hammers away on the shell...

...eventually grabbing the peanut...

...and slipping it into his gular pouch.

In late summer and early autumn Blue Jays and other birds start hoarding acorns and other seeds/nuts in winter caches. By storing their food, they can survive harsh winter conditions when normal food sources freeze over or run out. (Click here for an earlier post on this subject.) Blue Jays play a critical role in acorn dispersal. When they cache their food, they often dig small holes and bury the acorns, and according to Cornell’s site, All About Birds, Blue Jays store a lot of acorns! In one study, six birds with radio transmitters each stored 3,000 – 5,000 acorns in one season! Not all of the seeds or acorns are retrieved, however, and those that are abandoned often germinate. For this reason, Cornell also mentions Blue Jays were responsible for repopulating areas with oak trees after the last glaciers retreated.

Trip 2, flying in for another peanut after hatching out the first one.

...trip 3...

...trip 4. Rarely do they take just one peanut and move on. They usually return to their same perch to open the shell and store the peanut in their gular pouch before returning to nab another.

How many acorns can a Blue Jay move at once? A lot! A Blue Jay can move up to five acorns at a time—2 or 3 in the gular sac, one in the mouth and the last one at the tip of his bill. I’ve seen Blue Jays hatch out and swallow 8 or 9 single peanuts before moving on. I’ve also seen them swallow a hole peanut shell into their gular sacs…then take another in their mouth….and another in the tip of their bill, but usually, they hatch the peanuts out of the shell and take those.

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.

So after a year of blogging (my first post was January 3, 2009), Blue is still trying to get me to rename the blog “Blue and the Peanut” (click here for that early post), but I don’t think Red has anything to worry about! I have had so much fun over this past year. I had no idea I would meet so many other birders and bird bloggers. I’m so happy to be part of a community of bird and nature lovers. Thank you for always dropping by to visit and leave a comment or two. (...he's still at it...click here.)

Beak Bit
I wondered how many other birds had gular pouches. Quite a few do, some of the most famous are the pelicans. I love watching them scoop fish into their pouch and carry them off in their big pouches. The frigate birds also have a famous gular pouch, inflating the well-knows red skin during courtship displays in the spring. Other birds with less conspicuous pouches are White-winged Crossbills and Ptarmigans. The gular pouch allows these northern species to store food to make it through the arctic nights or bad snow storms (click for more info). Local birds with gular pouches include, owls. If you’ve ever seen a Great Horned Owl hooting, you’ll see the white feathers under his bill poof out…that’s his gular pouch. Cormorants have visible gular pouches also (click for more info)…just to name a few...