What Do Blue Jays Eat?

Video Transcript

"Blue Jays are the ultimate omnivore, Blue Jays will eat just about anything. They can be birds that in some people's mind are not particularly desirable, because they'll often rob the eggs or baby birds of other birds. So that they can be essentially a predator of sorts. They can eat huge amounts of seeds and grain. If you put sunflower seeds out in the winter time for birds at your feeder, you'll see the Blue Jays come and they'll fill up their crop. They'll take you know, like fifteen seeds at a time and then they'll fly off with them. Some of them which they'll hide and retrieve but others they will just sort of systematically bring up, one at a time, and open them up and then feed on them. They do take a lot of insects, in years when we have big caterpillar infestations with things like Gypsy Moths, for example. They'll feed on caterpillars and they'll take the time you know, to grab the caterpillar and whack it around a few times, get the hairy bristles off of it, and then swallow them. So again, they really are very versatile. In fact, an interesting side bar to Blue Jays, is that in some winters, when we've had extreme deep snow or cold. We've actually got a lot of calls here Mass Audubon, people observing Blue Jays feeding on peeling paint, white paint, specifically white latex paint. And it turns out that the presumed reason for this, rather peculiar behavior is that it's a way that they can supplement their need for calcium. That will ultimately be useful when it comes time to breeding, they breed fairly early in the season. So that, if there's not, if they're not able to get a lot of the stuff that they would normally get, due to stringent weather and deep snow. They would've given that mineral, they'll often take it from paint. So we get calls of people seeing Blue Jays peeling paint off, somebody's deck or off the side of their house. But it's almost always white latex paint. So interesting birds."