Blue jays are plant-eating omnivores who eat around 75% of their diet as plants and vegetables.
Insects, such as cicadas and dragonflies, are also commonly eaten by them. A Blue jay’s diet consists of around 22% insects and 78% plant stuff, according to one research.
In general, Blue jays have become one of the most frequent big songbirds in North America because of their skillful and inventive feeding habits.
Continue reading to find out more about the blue bird’s diet and foraging habits.
What Do Blue Jays Eat?
Because they are not picky eaters, blue jays will eat just about any seeds, suet, or nut you put out for them. Peanuts, especially shelled peanuts, are a favorite of theirs, which they like crushing in their beaks.
Blue jays are known to eat the following:
- Large seeds, like sunflower seeds, should be included in birdseed mixtures.
- Nuts such as peanuts, hazelnuts, and a wide variety of others
- Suet
- When it’s cold outside, there are a lot of leftovers, especially little pieces of meat.
- Blue jays will flock to your feeders if you give them sunflower seeds.
Food Consumed By Blue jays In fall
In the fall, Blue jays put greater effort into scavenging insects that can supply them with a protein boost before the cold weather sets in for the next winter months.
While grazing on the forest floor, Blue jays come upon a wide variety of worms, beetles, and other larvae. In addition, they’ll continue to forage for acorns, seeds, nuts, and berries, as well as other plant-based diets.
What Do Blue Jays Consume During The Colder Months?
Blue jays and other birds have to rely on a plant-heavy diet in the winter since insect numbers tend to decline when they hibernate (or die) in the fall.
In the winter, blue jays search for acorns, seeds, berries, and nuts, as well as mollusks, worms, ground beetles, and caterpillar eggs.
During the winter months, these high-protein meals are especially beneficial. In the winter, blue jays eat more carrion and leftovers from humans, and they frequently visit bird feeders and tables in gardens.
Where Do blue jay stores its food?
Caching is a unique Blue Jay behavior. Blue jays store hundreds of nuts and seeds, including beechnuts, hazelnuts, hickory nuts, and, of course, acorns, in their bodies throughout their lifetimes.
Blue jays cache food for the winter, when they don’t have to go out searching for it; instead, they can just discover and open their cache.
These caches are often dispersed over an area of a few square kilometers. Caching aids seed germination in part because caches are frequently located outside the natural forest boundaries. This encourages the growth of forests.
Is there a particular food that blue jays prefer to consume in the wild?
In addition to arthropods, blue jays also feed on plant material. Plant matter accounts for around 75% of their diet, according to some estimations.
Arthropods such as flies, cicadas, crickets, spiders, larvae of various sorts, beetles, and worms were detected in the stomach contents of 530 Blue jays in one research.
A summertime diet of 20% grasshoppers, cicadas, and crickets is not uncommon for the blue jay. As omnivorous birds, blue jays have the ability to forage for food, as well as catch prey such as flying insects.
A limited percentage of nestlings and bird eggs were detected in Blue Jays, despite the fact that the birds are known to attack and devour other birds and their young (as is the case with many corvids).
An abundance of Blue jays is found during acorn harvest seasons, which means that acorns are a primary food source for the birds.
What do Baby Blue Jays consume?
Baby blue jays eat the same foods as their parents, albeit they may be fed larvae and insects rather than the hard acorns and nuts that their parents are used to eating.
Do Blue Jays Prey On Other Birds?
It is well known that blue jays may kill and consume other tiny birds, including the eggs and chicks of several species of songbirds.
There are numerous other corvids, as well as magpies and crows, as well as many other kinds of birds, that act in a similar manner besides the Blue Jay.
Evidence shows that nest predation occurs only when food resources are at their lowest and that it is more of a ‘last option’ than a common practice.
Only around 5% of blue jays’ stomachs have been discovered to include flesh from nestlings of other birds, according to research.
How do Blue jays find food?
Blue jays may catch fast-moving, large-flying insects like dragonflies with their excellent aerial hunting skills.
Also, they scavenge the forest floor for insects and arthropods by jumping through plants and leaf mold. Blue jays are adept scavengers and hunters, which is why they seldom starve to death.
Do Blue Jays Consume Fruits?
Birds like blue jays prefer seeds, nuts, and insects over fruit. Blue jays have been observed to eat apples when placed on a garden bird feeder, but further research is needed to confirm this.
Do blue jays eat worms?
It is common for blue jays to feast on worms, caterpillars, and other forest floor critters. Blue jays have been seen focusing their foraging efforts in the winter on worms, possibly due to the high fat and protein content of these insects.
At last, I hope this article may have helped you in some way. Thank You For Reading!
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