EURASIAN JAY garrulus grandarius

Because we have many Oak trees and Chestnut trees on the farm, and berries are plentiful, Eurasian Jays made their nest here and flourish.I have written about them before and how they cache acorns in winter One Jay often caches up to 3000 a month.The Jays are all prolific planters of acorns and although they find most of them, some remain buried, and oak trees are the result.Thank you kindly for adding oaks to the forest.:=) Here are a few photographs I captured recently.

 

I read something this week that I didn't know about and it surprised me because of recent events (colony of ants taking over a wooden feeder, from which the birds refused to feed from).There is such a thing known as anting which the Eurasian Jay preforms, remaining passive while ants run over it's body. After anting, the bird often bathes then shakes itself and preens. I would have thought it was an irritant, but apparently; the Eurasian Jay and many other birds practice this behaviour.There are two types of anting, active and passive. In active anting a bird will crush an ant in it's bill and smear it on it's feathers or skin. It is thought that the formic acid helps the bird control feather mites.Of course many of you will already be aware of this practise. I was only aware that birds took dust baths to remove excess oil and dandruff from their feathers.

As the Jay performs undulating flight, I see it's conspicuous white rump as it flies away but it is oh so difficult to capture in flight, I try very hard but so far have not succeeded, and they usually fly low and between trees making it even more difficult.