Jay
I find Jays very difficult to photograph as in my area they are extremely shy and wary of humans. Although I know they can often become indifferent to humans in urban parks where they are not persecuted. It took me ages to manage a half-decent photograph of a Jay, even though they visit my garden, like this one yesterday.
In the breeding season Jays can become extraordinarily elusive as anyone who has done a bird race during May will testify. They become much more obvious in the autumn when the oak trees produce acorns. Acorns are definitely their favourite food and during the short period that acorns are available they go into overdrive. Amazingly each Jay can cache up to 5000 acorns in a season, storing up to 9 acorns in its crop as it goes off to hide them. It remembers where most of them are as a necessary food store during winter and can even find them under snow. Perhaps even more amazingly, it is thought that Jays are largely responsible for the distribution of oak trees in Britain and Europe. If you think about it, acorns drop directly downwards so would normally germinate where they land (under the parent tree). But because Jays hide their acorns far and wide, and they don't remember where they hid all of them, oak trees get a hand dispersing their acorns. Its scientific name is Garrulus glandarius. Garrulus means chattering and glandarius means pertaining to acorns. The Latin word for acorn is glans, which is also the name for the head of the penis, so named because its shape resembles an acorn.
Jay
I find Jays very difficult to photograph as in my area they are extremely shy and wary of humans. Although I know they can often become indifferent to humans in urban parks where they are not persecuted. It took me ages to manage a half-decent photograph of a Jay, even though they visit my garden, like this one yesterday.
In the breeding season Jays can become extraordinarily elusive as anyone who has done a bird race during May will testify. They become much more obvious in the autumn when the oak trees produce acorns. Acorns are definitely their favourite food and during the short period that acorns are available they go into overdrive. Amazingly each Jay can cache up to 5000 acorns in a season, storing up to 9 acorns in its crop as it goes off to hide them. It remembers where most of them are as a necessary food store during winter and can even find them under snow. Perhaps even more amazingly, it is thought that Jays are largely responsible for the distribution of oak trees in Britain and Europe. If you think about it, acorns drop directly downwards so would normally germinate where they land (under the parent tree). But because Jays hide their acorns far and wide, and they don't remember where they hid all of them, oak trees get a hand dispersing their acorns. Its scientific name is Garrulus glandarius. Garrulus means chattering and glandarius means pertaining to acorns. The Latin word for acorn is glans, which is also the name for the head of the penis, so named because its shape resembles an acorn.