Wild Bird Company
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Xcel Energy
Bird Cams
Osprey Cam
from Earth Cam
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| Osprey ©Wendy Marie Stuart |
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Wild Bird Company Saturday Bird Walk
(Every Saturday morning for our Colorado Birders)
Bird Watchers (that's us)
From 7:30 am (promptly)
to 10:00 am (approximately)
Every Saturday year-round. No reservations required. Every last Saturday of the month we travel further afield than normal and return a little later. Bird Walk locations are determined on the morning of the walk. All ages and birding abilities are welcome! Meet at Wild Bird Company 1641 - 28th St., Boulder, CO 80301
Call for more info: 303-442-1322 Wild Bird Company Weekly Bird Walk Newsletters & Bird Counts Wild Bird Company
Weekly Bird Walk Slide Shows
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I know many of you really love receiving the Facebook postings, weekly bird list and slide show emails and/or the monthly newsletter emails. Please consider sharing or forwarding these emails and postings to your friends interested in nature. I would really appreciate getting these educational postings to a wider audience. Thanks for the help. -Steve Frye
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Some of you may have seen our new sign and logo or noticed our new name. After many years as a franchise store, we have gone independent and changed our name to Wild Bird Company. We look forward to a continued relationship with our customers, increasing our brick-and-mortar and electronic inventories, greater educational resources, and so many other plans. Thank you all for making the last 27.5 years so memorable. I look forward to more good times. -Steve Frye
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Attracting Jays
by Steve Frye
Jays make a colorful and brash statement when they visit your yard. Although they have a poor reputation among some, their cheeky antics and stunning beauty make them a welcome visitor for many. There are approximately 11 species of jay in North America, but the most common bird feeder visitors
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Blue Jay ©Kevin Rutherford |
are the blue, Steller's, and the scrub species jays. Other jay species like gray or green, are either not common feeder birds or have a very limited range in North America so this article will use jay to mean the most common jays; scrub species, blue, and Steller's.
Bird Seed and Feeders to
Attract Jays
Jays are big and bold and they seem to be attracted to the same kind of big and bold seeds like sunflowers (especially striped), corn, tree nuts, peanuts, acorns, and pumpkin seeds. Any style feeder will work to present these seeds, but the feeder has to be big enough for the jay to perch on.
Suet for attracting jays varies quite a bit. It's worth a try, but don't be too discouraged if you have poor results. Try suets with nuts mixed in.
Jays are readily attracted to baked goods, pet food, and meat scraps.
There are specialty peanut feeders for both in-shell and shelled peanuts which the jays enjoy.
All jays love nuts including peanuts, but scrub-jays and Steller's Jays are readily attracted to kernel and ear corn.
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Steller's Jay
©Steve Frye
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Jays are especially prevalent at bird feeders in the fall because they are taking food to cache for winter. Jays prefer to cache "whole" foods like kernel corn, in-shell sunflowers, or in-shell peanuts presumably because they will not spoil as quickly in a cache. If you don't want jays hiding seeds all over your yard, then you need to feed shelled seeds (i.e. no shells). The jays tend to eat these seeds rather than cache them.
Bird Baths and Water Features to Attract Jays
Jays are "good" bathers meaning they will come frequently to a bird bath or water feature they feel comfortable using.
Jays, like other species, prefer shallow water where they can splash the water up over themselves. This gives them a better chance of escape should they need to.
Jays are intelligent and initially wary of new situations. Because they are more vulnerable to predation while water-logged when bathing, jays will only bathe in water features where they are completely comfortable. Good placement of a bird bath or water feature for jays is out in the open away from heavy ground cover where mammals could lurk, but close enough to trees and bushes where the jays could fly if a hawk approaches.
Bird Houses for Attracting Jays
Jays are secretive nesters who build their own nests in trees, usually away from houses and other public spaces. Jays do not use a bird house or nest box.
Gardening for Attracting Jays
Jays are sometimes referred to as the foresters of the bird world because in their caching activity, they plant many tree seeds which sprout if they do not return to eat those cached seeds. Among their favorite tree seeds to cache include acorns, beech nuts, and pine nuts.
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Western Scrub-Jay
©Neal Zaun
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Jays are omnivores; eating seeds, fruits, insects, carrion, and occasionally, eating eggs and nestlings or preying on other small animals or adult birds.
Fruit trees that attract jays include cherries, mulberries, blackberries, viburnum, hollies, and elderberries.
Jay's Bad Reputation
Many people consider jays to be bullies because of their occasional predation or nest raid for eggs or nestlings. While these activities are certainly true, they represent a very small portion of a jay's diet. Many customers complain that jays scare off the little birds. Their simple presence does not scare the birds away, but when jays approach a crowded feeder, they often give their alarm call which scatters the birds and they can land on an empty feeder. I have observed this behavior many times. You might think the birds would catch on and it would be like the boy that cried wolf, but other birds listen for and pay attention to the jay's alarm call. No doubt, it has saved them on many occasions so they always heed the warnings.
If you are trying to feed the birds and are overrun by jays so that other birds don't get a chance to feed, try using a weight or cage-restrictive feeder. These feeders will help select for smaller and lighter birds, not jays.
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Jay Products
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In-Shell
Peanuts
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Birds Choice
Magnet Mesh
In-Shell Peanut Feeder
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Birds Choice
Heated Bird Bath
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To view these and other products
from Wild Bird Company
Online Store that will Attract Jays
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Brown Booby in Boulder?
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Brown Booby ©Peter Baldwin
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This summer a bike rider in Left Hand Canyon took a picture with his phone of what he thought was an unusual bird. The images started to circulate of what appeared to be a brown booby which is an extremely rare bird for Colorado. In fact, a brown booby had never been seen in Colorado. They are usually a bird of the ocean tropics. Some thought the image might be a hoax and the bird was never refound. Later this summer, an article appeared in the Daily Camera which tells the rest of the story.
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New Changes to the Bird Names
What's in a name? That which we call a jay
By any other name would squawk as loud.
My apologies to Shakespeare. Every year a group of ornithologist and taxonomists working with the American Ornithological Union (AOU) get together to debate the latest bird research. They are trying to determine which birds are subspecies and which birds are their own species. To us humans, we tend to think of species as rather black and white, after all, no other species is similar to us? However, the avian reality is quite gray. One local bird has recently had its name changed, because of a split into two species, from Western Scrub-Jay to Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay due to this research. The conspiracy theorists in the birding world think this exercise is a means to sell more up-to-date bird books, but I assure you, it's just the progress of science.
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Ask Steve
Q: I have a blue jay in my yard without any feathers on its head. Is it sick?
A:
No, your jay is fine. In the late summer, jays molt their body feathers which are normally replaced gradually and it's only noticeable because the birds might look a little ragged. However, sometimes jays will molt all of their head feathers at once leaving its odd-looking black-skinned head. I sometimes refer to these birds as vulturine jays because their bald heads and collar of neck feathers reminds me of an old world vulture. Some people speculate that molting all of their head
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Molting Blue Jay
©Carolyn Beach
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feathers might be in response to rid feather lice of some other ectoparasite. This odd look is only temporary and your jay will soon have a complete new set of feathers and will be looking fine.
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Time To Clean Out Your Bird House
Violet-Green Swallow Nests ©Steve Frye
We suggest cleaning out your bird houses in the fall. Advice on this subject varies for differing reasons, but cleaning out the boxes in other seasons often creates doubt about whether or not the box is being used. In the fall, you know that nesting is not occurring so it's safe to go ahead and take out the old nest. Some people believe that you should leave the nest over the winter to give roosting birds extra protection from the cold. While the old nest may give some extra insulation within the nest box, I feel that the chance of disrupting nesting in the spring outweighs leaving the old nest in the box over winter. Therefore, it's time to remove the old nest from your nest box.
A few days ago, Wendy removed the violet-green swallow nest outside the front door of the Wild Bird Company. They have nested on the front of the store for several years now. The pair successfully raised one brood this year and started on a second, but then abandon their attempt. You will see from the photos that they had laid a full clutch. This nest was so beautiful that we had to share it.
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Calling all Cachers:
Five Pound Peanut Pickouts
Only $9.99
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Black-Capped Chickadee
©Kevin Rutherford
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[Note: When purchasing online, discount
will be applied during checkout]
Not to be combined with other offers.
Expires 11/15/16.
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Don't forget to pro-actively attract your favorite birds. Stop by the Wild Bird Company today or
Sincerely,
Stephen Frye
1.844.442.1322 (toll free)
Wild Bird Company Headquarters
1641- 28th Street, Boulder, CO 80301
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