Aug 30th, 2014

Author: donich_admin

The Jay Team

We have had a mystery on the Donich this week. Three days in a row, the bottom was off one of our bird feeders and all the nuts (over half kg) gone out of it. The bottom disk attaches with a butterfly screw – and I attach it reasonably tightly. At first I thought it could be the Marten had worked out how to undo it – but I am starting to suspect other offenders…

We have about six to eight jays in our garden – originally we had two, they were joined by another breeding pair this spring, and we think both sets have had young. They are really aggressive feeders on the nuts, I’ve seen one gobble down about 30 in quick succession. They are also reputedly very intelligent – they are related to magpies which are notorious collectors of shiny things.

So this morning there were four Jays all sitting in a row underneath the emptied feeder. I tried to get a photo but unfortunately they are quite shy and flew off while I was turning the camera on. When I came into the kitchen this evening to make our supper there were six of them – and I saw two of them fly at the feeder and buffet it about. Either they are just getting over excited, or they are deliberately putting their weight on the disk at the bottom so as to be able to get the nuts out faster.

As no pictures of the jays – here is one of the empty feeder….