Bandit Scrub Jays

Just when I thought that the bird seed couldn’t be disappearing any faster, someone sent a memo to the scrub jays.

They’re big birds, very intelligent, and with beautiful coloration. I enjoy having them here.

Too intelligent sometimes. They’re a bit too big to perch on the feeders, but they’ve figured out that they can hang upside down off of the side, do a chin up, and use their beaks to just scrape whole handfuls of seed over the edge to the ground below.

Once there’s a two-day supply of seed dumped on the ground, then they can hop down and eat it at their leisure.

At one point this morning I saw three separate jays hanging from three separate feeders and all doing this trick together. The finches weren’t much more happier than I was as they sat on top of the wall and the pergola and waited for the jays to leave so they could get back to their own looting and pillaging.