For quite some time now Blue jays visit may backyard for the peanuts. It's not that I have a peanut feeder installed, or indeed any feeder at all right now. It's not as if they rifle through mixed seed searching for peanuts and scatter everything else in the process. Those days are over! My jays are not like that any more. I call them my jays because I'm now their manager and they will jolly well do as they are told. Part of the game plan involves vocalization in order to alert me to a jay's arrival. Then it sits on the wooden arbour giving it disparaging glance because of it decrepit condition but will nonetheless sit patiently while I throw a handful of peanuts out the sliding glass door. The jay will then call the rest of the gang. Sometimes when the rest of the gang is already engaged in some other nefarious caper they won't show up right away. When this happens the lone wolf gets very upset. I love to watch it squirm. There is a pecking order and the lone bird doesn't quite know what to do when other birds, let's call them the higher-ups, don't arrive promptly. Does all this have a point? What if I said ... no?
The adaptive wrinkle is that the calling of the jays attracts squirrels and the neighbours cat. The jays already know that if squirrels arrive I will not throw out peanuts. Well, that's not good. If the cat arrives ... not good. So my jays, a clever lot, have learned to sit on the arbour in silence hoping that I will see them (it) and then I throw out peanuts. A lone bird does not proclaim the bounty with loud cries. It just takes a nut and flies away. When it returns it may be accompanied by another jay and they take a nut, and so forth until all have been informed. When and if there is vocalization, it will be carried out from several houses away, return to the nuts, and if no one else arrives, fly a few houses away and call from there, thereby not revealing the true location of the peanuts. My jays have adapted to overcome cats and squirrels. Wait, ... do you think that they are already planning to get a new manager? Those bloody ingrates!
