Jay ordinary – colored forest bird with fluffy pinkish-red plumage, black, with white edges to wing feathers and a bright striped blue spot on the bend of the wing, of moderate length, the tail is also black, and the rump and uppertail are white. Very elegant bird! Seeing her at close range, you learn easily.
The size of it with a Daw, its body length 34 cm, but the weight-even a little easier – by 158.8- is 165.5 g. in Autumn jays are noisy, easy to attract the attention of the observer. But during the breeding season behave discreetly and quietly, avoiding the face.Jay is the principal consumer of the oak acorns, although acorns and eating many more birds – big motley woodpeckers, nuthatches, grouse birds, and even ducks, especially the far Eastern Mandarin duck and our duck. All of them except woodpecker and nuthatch, swallow acorns whole, almost no oak, no noticeable traces of your activities. And where feeding jays, you can find the broken shells of acorns with traces of short, but strong beak.
This is the work of the blue jays.It often makes the stocks of acorns, hiding them in moss or poking under the peeled bark. In the autumn, at the time of harvesting potatoes, the crow flies on harvested potato field and picks up small nodules of potato, along the way, pecking away at insects, and never misses a chance to grab a vole.
Catching a rodent, it carries it on some stump or snag and tore off the victim’s skin in small pieces. In place of a meal remain shreds of skins, bits of the intestines, the stomach intact, and sometimes just eaten part of a rodent. Sometimes this bird catches small frogs, but too often they do not eat.
In addition to the jays eat acorns and other fruits. Hazelnuts split on stumps or fallen trees, leaving in place the fragments of the shell. Occasionally eat the fruit of the red elderberry, raspberry, strawberry, cherry, cowberry, birdcherry, Rowan. In late autumn out at the harvested fields and pick up grain oats, peas, corn. In the summer actively preys on insects, including large beetles – may, bronzovok, Longhorn. Catch the hornets, eat hairy caterpillars of moths and silkworms. Jay could be considered definitely useful a bird as rasprostranitelem oak, and also as a medic, destroying harmful insects and rodents.
But during breeding season it often ravages nests of small insectivorous birds, and unlike the crows and magpies, not to take away eggs, and, breaking the shell, drink their contents in place, leaving the nest empty, damaged beak of the shell. He can kill and eat small fish. Snow until the snow depth is still small, Jay continues to stay in the oak and Hickory. Looking for nuts and acorns, digging for snow and rake leaves. But unlike the protein found nut it is not split immediately, in the hole, and carries a handy place – a stump or limb. During takeoff birds near the wells often there are traces of its wings.
Paw prints jays, and they are 6×1.5 cm, easy to distinguish from signs of other corvids, the cameras also. Like most corvids, Jay resets sometimes regurgitates. They are medium-sized, 2.3 x 1.5 cm, and consist of the seeds of various fruits and the chitin of insects.
Jay nests on different trees, placing the nest at a low height. Places nest in the fork of a trunk, on a branch near the trunk and often vygnivshaja cavity of an old tree. I have found nests of these birds only in pines and firs. Outside the nest is composed of fine dry twigs and is lined inside with thin roots and dry grass. The clutch is usually 5 eggs, though there are indications that there may be more, almost to 10 PCs Eggs, medium-sized, slightly larger than the eggs of the Blackbird. The mean value of 30.5×22,2 mm. On a light yellowish background of fine mottles are arranged so densely that all of the egg seems clay-yellow.
