Date: 4/1/21 5:17 am From: Jon Woolf <jsw...> Subject: Re: [NHBirds] Blue jay call question
Hi Duane,
At 08:49 PM 3/31/2021, 'Duane Cross' via NHBirds wrote:
My wife and I take a 6 mile walk everyday out into Lyman and back. Yesterday on our return trip we heard a Red-tail hawk doing the scream call that they often make when startled into flight. It was close by and coming from a nearby tree. After a bit of searching the tree I noticed that the call was being made by a Blue jay. A short while later he flew off still vocalizing the hawk call. I know that Blue jays have a large call vocabulary but was unaware that they had the ability to mimic other bird's calls. Has anyone else experienced this before. It's a first for me despite having many Blue jays coming to my feeders. Duane Cross .
Blue Jays are notorious for imitating Red-shouldered and Red-tailed hawk calls. I've heard some people say that they do it to scare other birds away from a food source, like a bird feeder, but I don't know how much truth there is in that. I do know I've heard them imitating hawks more than once. Last year I also heard one that seemed to be trying to imitate a duck - a Mallard's quacking, to be exact.
