Here you see the leader of a band of Blue Jays that recently has been marauding bird feeders and acting like impolite loudmouths in the quiet woods around here.
As with other members of their Corvid family (e.g., Crows and Ravens), Blue Jays are smart, but have a few bad habits. Nonetheless, Blue Jays perform a very important environmental function – they are prodigious acorn hiders, each bird reportedly planting thousands of potential oak trees a year.
Some of our Blue Jays migrate south in the winter, but most of them reportedly stay over the winter, bothering their neighbors and trying to find the acorns that they stored.
There are four subspecies of Blue Jays in the United States, The ones in Maine (and Canada) are the Northern Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata bromia), the largest subspecies. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 3, 2022.)