Keep your eyes peeled for the secretive Jay
THE Jay is a handsome bird. Some people call it ‘ the blue jay’ drawing attention to one of its most striking features: a bright panel of light blue feathers finely streaked with wiggly black lines covering the ‘ elbow’ of each wing.
In addition to its blue wing patches, the colourful Jay sports a number of other striking features. It has a black moustache extending back from the base of its bill. It has a white throat and white streaks on its forehead interspersed with black spots and speckles. It has a black tail, and when it opens its wings to fly away, it has large white patches on its rump and wings.
All of these features are made all the more striking as they are set against the bird’s overall pinkish, greyish, brownish background plumage.
The Jackdaw-sized Jays that live in Ireland are regarded a distinct variation or race as the pinkish plumage is darker, more a red-brown than a grey-brown.
All of these bright colours are a bit at odds with the fact that the Jay is a member of the crow family.
Jays are shy woodland birds that are difficult to approach. They feed on a wide variety of food sources including seeds, berries and insects. Like Magpies, they are known to raid other birds’ nests and eat eggs and chicks.
Jays have been recorded visiting bird tables and gardens, but these elusive birds rarely do so as they are very vigilant and cautious of people and rarely emerge from a safety of tree cover.
Acorns are a favourite food at this time of year. They will eat their fill and bury stores to tide them over lean times during the winter when food is scare. It follows, therefore, that oak woods with trees bearing lots of fruit at present are good places to visit at this time of year in the hope of seeing a Jay.
Jays bury large numbers of acorns and are remarkably skilled at remembering where they hid them. However, they fail to relocate many of them and these go on to germinate and produce saplings benefitting from being buried by the busy Jays.
While the secretive Jay is usually difficult to see it may give away its presence by the loud screeching alarm call that it makes when it senses danger. And, furthermore, as autumn advances and more leaves fall from the trees the colourful Jay may be easier to spot. WHEN visiting relatives in Nova Scotia recently, I heard a sad tale. My aunt’s collie-cross dog, Jeanie, was accustomed to going for walks on her own in the local woodlands. The area was genuine Canadian wilderness, with no local farm livestock to worry about, so this was never seen as a big problem. Jeanie gained much pleasure from chasing chipmunks, sniffing out scents of game birds like grouse, and generally enjoying being out and about in the open air. ONE winter’s day, when the snow was thick on the ground, Jeanie didn’t come home at dusk, for her dinner. She always returned for supper, so my aunt was immediately worried. What could have happened? IT was simple to find out, as fresh snow had fallen early in the day, and it had then stopped snowing. Jeanie’s tracks could easily be followed in the snow with a torchlight. My aunt traced her from the back porch, along a track into the local woodland for a few hundred yards, into an open clearing. And this is where she found evidence of the tragedy: the snow had been trodden down flat over an area with a circumference of ten meters.
And there was red blood mixed with the tramped down snow. Then on the far side of the area, there were the distinctive footprints of three or four large coyotes, tracking away from in the opposite direction. It was obvious that Jeanie had encountered a pack of hungry coyotes, and despite putting up a valiant battle she had been slain. My aunt never found her body.
HERE in Ireland, we are lucky enough not to have serious predators: in Nova Scotia, as well as the coyotes, there are bears and even rumours of wolves. There is also an ongoing threat from the skies, with eagles occasionally snatching small dogs from back yards.
IN this country, the biggest carnivorous mammals are foxes and badgers, and it’s rare for them to attack pets. Of course, dogs can’t be allowed to run wild in the countryside, because of the damage they would cause to sheep and other livestock. Their lives would be at risk if they did so, not from other animals but from the guns of farmers who would be justificably looking after the animals under their care.
FOXES are not entirely innocent: they are a blight to poultry owners, regularly snatching hens and ducks from back yards. Part of the responsibility of being a good poultry keeper is to ensure that your charges are penned up safely at night in fox proof accommodation.
I have heard of people witnessing their pet cats being snatched by foxes too: healthy adult cats would be too much for a fox, but they have been seen taking weaker animals, like kittens and elderly cats.
WE are also unfortunate enough to have an introduced predator in Ireland: mink have escaped from fur farms and bred in the wild. They are a far more difficult carnivore to keep out than foxes, slinking through tiny openings into hen runs, causing devastation then sneaking away, unseen. IN London, there has been an ongoing mystery around multiple deaths of cats in certain suburbs, with cats going missing, then their mutilated bodies turning up later. The assailant was dubbed “The Croydon Cat Killer”, and cat owners were warned to keep their pets indoors to prevent them from becoming the next victims. More than 400 cats were killed, and suspicious cat deaths were reported across England, as far north as Manchester. EVENTUALLY, the police became involved. The bodies of the victims were submitted for forensic analysis by experienced pathologists. The report of their findings was released during the summer, and their conclusions were clear: there was no crazed Croydon Cat Killer. There was no evidence of traces of clothing, human DNA or a murder weapon and no CCTV footage had been recovered. Humans had not played a deliberate part in the deaths of these much loved pets.
THE cause was a combination of the mundane and the worrying. First, many of the deaths were proven to be caused by road traffic accidents. Cats - especially young cats- don’t have much road sense, and they can be impossible for cars to avoid if they dash out into their path. A car will cause devastating injuries to a cat, and while this cause is obvious when a cat is found beside the road, if a cats is relocated to somewhere else, it’s harder to make the connection. Dead cats are sometimes moved by people who feel that it’s undignified for a cat to be left in such a visible place, and they are also sometimes moved by predators like foxes. The fox might then eat some of the cat before abandoning its body, causing the types of mutilations which made people suspect a sadistic human killer.
AS well as eating cats that have already been killed, the pathologists proved that some foxes were actually preying on living pet cats. The fox population in urban areas like London has boomed, and with the widespread use of tamper-proof wheelie bins, it has become more difficult for foxes to find food to scavenge. For this reason, they get more and more hungry, and this then leads to them becoming bolder. When a fox has learned that it can successfully snatch a cat and enjoy a feline meal, the behaviour tends to be repeated.
If you have a frail cat - whether elderly or young - be aware of the risk from foxes.