The Blue Jays in Your Yard Are Burying 3,000 Acorns This Month — And You've Never Seen Where

I wrote a field handbook for reading familiar backyard bird behavior without guessing beyond the evidence: https://victorcarpenter.com/ The blue jay flying off over your roof with a throat full of acorns is not a bully hoarding food. It is part of a planting operation that moves thousands of acorns across your neighborhood every October. In this video: how jays inspect and reject weevil-infested acorns, why they cannot live on acorns alone (and why they hit your feeder so hard this month), the Virginia studies that counted about 3,000 acorns per jay in four weeks, where those acorns actually end up, and how jays helped oaks spread north after the last ice age. Tell me in the comments whether you have ever found an oak seedling in your yard with no oak tree nearby, and what state or province you are in. I read every one. Sources: Darley-Hill & Johnson (Oecologia, 1981), Johnson & Adkisson (Natural History, 1986), Johnson, Thomas & Adkisson (Oecologia, 1993), Dixon, Johnson & Adkisson (Oecologia, 1997), Johnson & Webb (Journal of Biogeography, 1989), Audubon, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. #bluejay #bluejays #acorns #oaktrees #backyardbirds #birdwatching #birding