California Scrubjay

Fun Facts:

• They eat mostly insects and fruit during spring and summer. Then they switch to nuts and seeds during fall and winter, especially acorns. They sometimes eat small animals like lizards and birds.
• This bird lays mostly 3-5 eggs at a time, they usually are light green, with olive or brown spots.
• Scrub Jays are good at planning for the future and remembering the past. As they remember all of their caches of acorns that they know they will need for the future.

In the fall, Scrub-Jays gather thousands of acorns from oak trees and hide them to eat during the winter. They stick the acorns in the ground, looking around to make sure no other Scrub-Jays are watching. Since they hide acorns over a large area, it is remarkable that they later find so many of them. But they don’t find them all, which means they inadvertently plant a lot of oak trees. To eat an acorn, a Scrub-Jay holds it with its feet and hammers it with its stout beak. Once the acorn is open, the Scrub-Jay uses the hook on its beak to get out the meat. During spring and summer, Scrub-Jays eat insects and fruit as well as the eggs and chicks of other birds. Scrub-Jays are lively and noisy. If you hear a harsh call and see a bird swooping by, look for a flash of blue.