Blue Jay

The blue jay is a medium-sized songbird native to eastern and central North America, easily recognized by its vivid blue, white and black plumage, prominent crest and loud, varied calls, including an ability to mimic the calls of hawks. It lives mainly in deciduous and mixed forests as well as parks and suburban gardens, feeding on a broad diet of nuts, seeds, fruit, insects and occasionally the eggs or young of other birds. Blue jays are known for caching acorns and other food for later use, a habit that makes them an important, if inadvertent, planter of oak trees across their range. The species is common and adaptable, and populations in the northern part of its range shift southward in some winters in a pattern that is not yet fully understood.