This morning I encountered, in a smallish tree behind a house at the east end of Burns Rd., a flock of 22 BLUE JAYS. This general area, for some reason, has a lot of these jays throughout the year, although groups of this size appear later in the Spring. There were some "jayyy" calls, no bobbing that I noticed, and 2 birds alternated singing the "toolool" and "wheedelee" calls for a while. (Behavior and calls as described in Stokes, "Guide to Bird Behavior", vol 1.). They are apparently getting primed for the upcoming courtship season, although today's encounter is 2 weeks earlier than my notes for past years indicate.
Steve Fast Brooktondale -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
