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In daytime the most industrious actors in camera view are the jays – sometimes up to six individuals.

 

The birds have diligently collected winter stores in Ilmatsalu and hidden them for bad times to come. There is room for up to twelve acorns in a jay’s elastic gullet. When they rise into flight the gobbled-down acorns begin to spill from the beak, and only half of them may reach the hiding place. It is the same with grain. For hiding places mouse-free areas are sought out – it is after all senseless to make stores for food competitors.  Jays are clever enough and have sufficiently good visual memory to find most of the hiding places even when the landscape turns wintery. They are busy at forest fringes where there is plenty of undergrowth; they behave cautiously but they are not shy of people.

 

The winter numbers of the birds, with their flapping flight image, have fluctuated over the years: a hundred thousand up to a quarter of a million. Our national colours show on the closed wings of jays, body is pinkish grey, tail base white; the tail is long and black but not as long as a magpie’s. When disturbed the feathers on the crown are raised. See the eye colour of jays in Arne’s photo; the beak is black and legs pale brown. Jays have a length of up to 35 centimetres, weight about 150 grams and the wing span is more than half a metre.

 

Observations of jays: LINK

 

Jay