Feathered Kings on our Lawn

     One day this past April, I saw a handsome blue jay repeatedly gathering bits of food from our grassy lawn and tenderly feeding them to another jay as apart of their courtship.  Though the genders of blue jays are identical in feathering, I assumed by their behavior that the feeding bird was the male of the pair.  And a month later, I accidentally noticed the jays' twig, open-cup nursery, with young in it, on top of an eight-foot-tall red juniper tree on our lawn.  And because they are permanent residents in our neighborhood, a pair of blue jays raises young here every spring into early summer.      
     Of all the kinds of small birds on our lawn in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the adaptable, permanent resident blue jays have been "king" for the 29 years I've lived in that small town.  They are royalty to me in typical suburban areas because of their being larger than most other species of birds regularly on lawns at some time of the year or another.  And they are bold and often noisy like the crows they are related to.  They shrilly call " jay, jay" and can imitate the "keeee-youuuu" scream of red-shouldered hawks that mostly live in bottomland woods, as blue jays do, too.  But jays are silent during the nesting season because they don't want to attract attention to their young.
     Blue jays are strikingly handsome birds.  They are white below and mostly blue on top with black and white spots and streaking.  They also have white faces and throats, and a black collar on the back of the head from the crest down on both sides to, and tied under, the "chin".  Blue jays are particularly attractive when foraging for acorns among the red and brown foliage of pin oak trees and searching for beech nuts among the bronze leaves of American beech trees.  They are also beautiful when perched on coniferous trees laden with snow.  They spend winter nights huddled in some of those conifers as well.    
     Each blue jay collects pin oak acorns and beech nuts because those foods are small enough for the jay to handle.  The jay harvests one nut at a time with its black beak and flies away with it to either stash it in a tree cavity or to use its sturdy bill to push it into soft soil on woodland floors and/or grassy lawns.  Those nuts are eaten by the jay during winter.  But if the jay is killed by a hawk, for instance, or forgets some of the nuts it stuck into the ground, those nuts could grow into new trees. 
     Like their crow cousins, blue jays will eat about anything, including invertebrates, nuts, berries, grain, seeds and most anything else edible.  Jays mostly live and get food in woods and older suburbs with their many large trees and bushes.  They also enter nearby fields to eat waste corn kernels on the ground and readily visit bird feeders to consume grain and seeds.  They sometimes scavenge dead animals and can be predators at times.  Blue jays have been known to eat eggs and young right out of smaller birds' nests.  I once saw a jay killing a house sparrow by hammering the smaller bird with its stout beak.  
     Blue jays live throughout the eastern half of the United States and in very southeastern Canada.  Most jays of this species live permanently in one area, but some of the more northern populations migrate south in small, silent groups during October.  Spotting group after group of blue jays and other kinds of birds winging south over the colored leaves of deciduous woods is exciting and pleasurable.  
     Blue jays are my favorite lawn birds because they are attractive, adaptable and interesting to watch at home the year around.  Their wild, loud presence can be exciting, especially when they are calling shrilly from tree tops or loudly harassing a hawk or owl.  And they are handsome when hopping among colored foliage in quest of nuts in autumn, or perched on snow-heaped evergreen trees.  They are fun neighbors to have.