Birder on Berry Lane by Robert Tougias

Author:Robert Tougias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Published: 2020-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

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BESIDES THE BARRED OWLS, which generally fledge in May somewhere far back in the adjacent woods, the first young to appear around my lot are our resident red-shouldered hawks. The hawks always make their appearance in this world with a raucous greeting. Red-shouldered hawks are very vocal, so there’s no escaping the noise when the entire family lives just a hundred feet away. They usually make this noise all spring and summer. I remember one July a few years ago when the hawks suddenly became uncharacteristically quiet, and I thought that maybe something had happened to them. I therefore was excited when I heard one calling sharply outside, near the deck.

I jumped from my desk, tripped over my cat Stripe, and hurried out to see the hawk. To my surprise, there was no hawk—instead, I found a frantic blue jay hopping around, head cocked, crest slightly raised, and what looked like a menacing twinkle in its eyes. I’d been fooled! Astonished, I stood there and watched the jay do a perfect imitation of my resident red-shouldered hawk. It wasn’t the first time the old jay had tricked me like that. Each time it happens, it seems as if the jay is laughing at me, but I try not to anthropomorphize.

Blue jays are clever birds, and somehow it wouldn’t surprise me if somewhere in that bird’s brilliant little brain there wasn’t some appreciation for humor or jesting. Although the jay is a common bird that most of us are very familiar with, few of us know that they are skilled mimics. Blue jays can accurately mimic songbirds, rusty gates, squeaky swings, car alarms, pets, and even human voices. Someone once told me about a jay that had fifty different mimics in his repertoire and could ventriloquize some of the calls to specific objects.

Most people are unaware of blue jays’ high level of intelligence. Since the research of the German animal behaviorist Otto Koehler, who taught corvids to count in the 1940s, scientists have continued to document jays’ keen intellect. Ornithologists now know that the corvid family, which includes our native ravens, crows, and jays, learn more quickly than higher mammals such as cats, dogs, and even monkeys. Ravens have scored higher than some graduate students on memory tests; scientists have also observed them using simple tools to to solve problems while in captivity. Jays can recall the general timing, place, and sequence of important events and can plan ahead and operate levers at the right time to obtain food. One example of the jays’ intelligence comes from our native species of jay, the blue jay, which has been observed using scraps of paper to make tools for reaching food outside their cages.

We may never be able to ascertain whether jays have a true sense of humor, but jays in captivity have been observed bouncing balls and hiding objects on their keepers. Even the scientific literature admits to jays’ seeming playfulness. It’s common knowledge that blue jays like to mimic red-shouldered hawks.

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