I found a dead bird.

[Darwin]

Actually, underneath all those beautiful feathers is a bottomless pit with no manners whatsoever, LOL!

I was recently digging around on the Web for info on cowbirds, and ran across info that blue jays often eat the eggs, and even nestlings, of other birds (as will magpies, starlings, curlews, crows, grackles, ravens,gulls, vultures, various raptors, condors, toucans, and probably some others).

[Nanohedron]

Opportunists of the first water. Handsome, but I wouldn't want them around.

[herbivore12]

In case any of you East Coasters is curious...

This is a Stellar Jay (this site has it spelled wrong, but has a good picture):

http://babbitsgarden.snoville.com/Stellers.html

Actually, they've got the spelling right. It's Steller's Jay, at least in all my books.

(Cyanocitta stelleri: named after George Wilhelm Steller; I just knew all that bird nerdiness would pay off big one day!)

I like jays for their extraordinary intelligence and cleverness. But yeah, they sure can be pesky. I once saw a mother quail crossing the road with a load of babies trailing after; I think maybe two babies out of ten or so made it to the other side, the rest being picked off by a group of jays that had lain in wait. Fascinating and a little horrifying at the same time. . .

[anniemcu]

Actually, underneath all those beautiful feathers is a bottomless pit with no manners whatsoever, LOL!

I was recently digging around on the Web for info on cowbirds, and ran across info that blue jays often eat the eggs, and even nestlings, of other birds (as will magpies, starlings, curlews, crows, grackles, ravens,gulls, vultures, various raptors, condors, toucans, and probably some others).

The cowbird, which we also have some of in our neck of the woods, has the habit of laying its eggs in another bird's next, often disposing of any resident eggs, or even young chicks, to assure that their own wil be raised. This seemingly lazy, opportunistic, and barbaric practice is apparently hold over from the days when they followed the buffalo on migrations, for food, and couldn't stay anywhere to raise their own. Interesting.

After I found that out, I didn't dislike them nearly so much.

[brianormond]

-Similar to Peggy's experience: An eastern jay swooped down on my dad
as he mowed the lawn, leaving a wound on Dad's bald noggin. Dad was nonplussed more than hurt.

-The Canadian jays/gray jays/whiskeyjacks in the Cascades here are easily tempted to hand feed, especially in winter. Their insatiable hunger overcomes their fear at the sight of a corn nut held up in offering. -Good to know when its time to gather ingredients for that Four-and-Twenty-Whiskeyjack pie.

[djm]

Like most migratory birds, the northern most eastern blue jays move a little bit south for winter, which causes the local jays to move a bit south, etc. until we get whole flocks of them in fall. Its common (but still spectacluar) to come across a flock of 50-100 blue jays in the trees preparing to fly south across Lake Erie for the winter.

djm

[anniemcu]

Like most migratory birds, the northern most eastern blue jays move a little bit south for winter, which causes the local jays to move a bit south, etc. until we get whole flocks of them in fall. Its common (but still spectacluar) to come across a flock of 50-100 blue jays in the trees preparing to fly south across Lake Erie for the winter.

djm

Our crowd is a flock of close to ten full time residents.

[Charlene]

Last summer my daughter was looking out the window and said "mom, I just saw a bird fall out of the tree!"

I went out and there was a dead starling. I picked it up with a shovel and put it in a bucket with a lid on and took it to the animal shelter. I told them it had just died and we saw it fall out of the tree, and that I was worried about the West Nile Virus. The girl behind the counter looked at me as if I was six different kinds of idiots rolled into one, took the bird, and said the vet would check it out. I left my name and phone number in case they needed more info. Never heard back from them. I'm pretty sure they just dumped it into the incinerator and laughed at me.

[jim stone]

Lovely photo. Death sucks.

[toughknot]

I find the dying part is what sucks.

[Denny]

I find the dying part is what sucks.

especially the painful ones
or is that expecially?

Ya, wrong thread, again!
Denny

[Darwin]

Actually, underneath all those beautiful feathers is a bottomless pit with no manners whatsoever, LOL!

I was recently digging around on the Web for info on cowbirds, and ran across info that blue jays often eat the eggs, and even nestlings, of other birds (as will magpies, starlings, curlews, crows, grackles, ravens,gulls, vultures, various raptors, condors, toucans, and probably some others).

The cowbird, which we also have some of in our neck of the woods, has the habit of laying its eggs in another bird's next, often disposing of any resident eggs, or even young chicks, to assure that their own wil be raised. This seemingly lazy, opportunistic, and barbaric practice is apparently hold over from the days when they followed the buffalo on migrations, for food, and couldn't stay anywhere to raise their own. Interesting.

After I found that out, I didn't dislike them nearly so much.

Actually, cowbirds never build nests, so they're kind of stuck with that behavior.

However, where the European cuckoo hatchlings push the competing eggs and chicks out of the nest, cowbirds don't. Instead, they just grab most of the food, but the cries of the other chicks help encourage the parents to bring more food than the cowbird could stimulate on its own.

Here's something on other birds with simiar behavior:

"While cowbirds are the only North American parasitic birds "obliged" to parasitism as a way of life, there are many other species that habitually lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.

Black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos, grebes, rails, the roadrunner, brown thrasher, starling, sparrows and some finches all victimize other birds. The duck family has several members whose behavior approaches obligate parasitism--21 species are known for this behavior. The redhead and the ruddy duck are well known parasites. Several pheasant species are parasitic, and both California and Bob White quail lay in other ground-nesting birds’ nests.

Cowbirds have become a politically correct target of human prejudice, not only because of their behavior, but also because of massive destruction of forests. With more and more forest-dwelling species left without preferred nesting spots, they nest in open places where they are vulnerable to cowbird parasitism. These migratory forest-dwellers are among those whose numbers are crashing in the Americas, and the cowbird has been labeled as one reason by some biologists—a claim championed by some foresters.

It is at least ironic that foresters, those "trees are crops" guys who love clear-cutting and pine plantations, have found a 7-inch bird to blame for part of the destruction they promote."

I read elsewhere that some blue jays and mourning doves sometimes lay eggs in the nests of other birds, too.

I got interested in cowbirds because we had a dove nest in our rain gutter. The dove baby grew really fast, and what I thought was one of the adults on the nest turned out to be the nearly grown chick. Finally, it crawled up on the roof, so that I could see that it was not an adult. The next day, it was gone, but I think I saw it in the backyard. After a couple more days, it seemed obvious that the nest was deserted. I was curious about the nest, so I got a ladder and took a peek. I was surprised to see an egg in the nest.

The egg was whitish with dark speckles, so I went to Google to find out about dove eggs. But everything I could find said that dove eggs are pure white. It appears that the brownheaded cowbird has a speckled egg. The nest was rather spread out, and the egg was off to the right side, whereas I had seen the parents sitting at the extreme left, so I'm thinking that the cowbird (if that's what it was) laid its egg too far to one side, so the dove didn't cover it while sitting on its own egg.

What's odd about the baby dove is that it had speckled wings, like pictures I found of mourning doves, but the parents both had smooth gray wings. When I first saw it on the roof, I didn't even think that it was a dove, but the head was very distinctly dove-like.

It's all a bit confusing. I guess I'll have to wait till next year to see what happens then.

Regarding the loss of habitat by the "victimized" birds, I see today that the government plans "to open nearly one-third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures". At least that probably doesn't include Arkansas, so maybe the ivory-billed woodpecker is still safe for now.

[brewerpaul]

Around here in the Northeast, I think the only birds they've implicated with West Nile are crows.

The Jay is a very cool bird-- the most tropical looking thing we have in NY State. A lot of people think they're a nusiance since they hog all the seeds in peoples' bird feeders, but I love these sassy critters.

Mark Twain wrote a hilarious piece which totally captures their character.

http://www.american-buddha.com/bakerbluejay.htm

[Walden]

All sorts of birds frequent my house, but the other day, my father and I pulled in and I noticed a blue jay lying kind of funny in the grass, and I said, "what's up with that jay bird?" And my dad said, "he's sunning himself." Sure enough, he was doing just that, and eventually got up and flew off.

That picture of the dead one made me think of this, albeit the dead one was gloomier.

Paul, of the birds we have around here, I also find indigo buntings (especially if the light hits them just so), great blue herons, and even cardinals, to be every bit as spectacular as any birds I saw in the wild in the years I lived in the tropics. Scissortails, too, though sort of common looking at first glance, have a great deal of grace and elegance.

We have bald eagles around here, which are magnificent, but seem sort of little in comparison to the rare monkey-eating eagles of Mindanao.

[TomB]

Thanks. I actually had to position it around a lot, and somebody told me I was being gross, but I said, "At least I don't pluck its feathers and cook it and call it food."

It's true.

I'd be worried about mites.

I already have them anyway.

....and if you didn't have them, you "mite" not get them anyway

All the Best, Tom