Blue Jays on the Move

Our neighborhood has a troupe of resident blue jays that make their rounds – most days – through our backyard for the bird bath and swooping off to the maple and then the taller tulip poplars at the edge of the forest. Sometimes they stop to look through our gutters for bugs in the leaf debris. The picture below is one on our deck railing after he got his drink of water. That is the small part of the route that they are easy to see; some of the time I miss seeing them completely but I always hear them.

This time of year the numbers of blue jays are much higher because so many of them are migrating through Maryland to go further south for the winter. I’ve often wondered whether the resident ones ‘talk’ to the transient birds because it seems like we have more blue jays around than we have during the rest of the year.

While I was raking leaves on Wednesday (the first round of the chore for this year!), a flock of blue jays chattered (or is it more like arguing) in the trees above.