WHAT DO BLUE JAYS DO WITH ALL THOSE PEANUTS?

I could not help chuckling at this question about those seemingly greedy little blue jays!

I too have had similar experiences with these birds, particularly with peanuts in the shell placed in an open feeder. One puts out a handful or two of those food items in a bowl, and within hours, sometimes minutes, a blue jay comes in, grabs one or two, and flies off with it, only to return in minutes for another beakful.

Blue jays are among the smartest birds on the planet, and rather than having to share the peanuts with other bird species, they just keep coming back to the feeder, grabbing as many peanuts as they can carry in their beaks, and fly off to store them somewhere safe. And they usually don’t stop until the feeder is empty!

They usually hide the peanuts by burying them just under the soil and leaf litter in some favourite places. And they are pretty good at remembering those sites too. A couple of tips – avoid feeding them the salted peanuts made for humans and only put out enough at a time to keep them from getting moldy. And apparently you can buy squirrel-proof peanut dispensers!

I am waiting for someone to invent a feeder that makes it a wee bit tougher for those jays to remove the peanuts. It would be nice to see these strikingly coloured birds stick around the feeder a bit longer.