By VAL CUNNINGHAM
Q I feed peanuts in the shell to the back-yard squirrels and birds and have noticed the blue jays doing something odd with them. They'll pick one up, lay it down, pick up another and then drop it in favor of a third peanut, before flying off. Any ideas about what they're doing?
A This behavior points up how smart blue jays are. They want the biggest reward first, so they're picking up each peanut, looking for the heaviest one. Once they have a heavy peanut in the beak, they fly off to consume it or hide it for a later snack. Then they return to find the next heaviest nut, and so on. Blue jays can clear out a pile of peanuts very quickly. This is pretty amazing bird behavior, and it may be even more amazing that researchers have studied jays to come up with the answer.
So many crowsQ The sight of all those crows heading toward downtown for the night fascinates me. Does this mean that crows have recovered from West Nile Virus? When they head out for the day, what do they eat?
A I asked Kevin McGowan, a researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, about crow roosts and he notes that we can't tell much about the health of crow populations by the size of a nighttime gathering. The roosts we see may be drawing in all the crows around our area. Midwest crows were hit harder than crows in any other area by the nearly always fatal virus and no one knows whether the population is recovering yet. When they head out during the day, they're looking for what omnivores eat, anything and everything. Crows eat roadkill, but they also check compost heaps, lake ice for fishsicles, farm fields, bird feeding stations, crabapple trees and so on.
Birds for kidsQ Our little granddaughter, who loves watching birds, is coming for a visit and I want to make sure there are birds to see. Any suggestions?
A It's wonderful that you're introducing your granddaughter to the fascinating world of birds. In this extremely cold winter, birds have sometimes seemed scarce. Try sweeping off a spot for ground-feeding birds, then toss some cracked corn and millet seed there each day. A suet feeder should bring in woodpeckers but is also popular with squirrels, so try hanging the feeder from a shepherd's hook pole.
If you have a deck or patio (or swept spot), it's fun to toss out 15 or so peanuts in the shell and watch the blue jays show up. They'll "weigh" each one, departing with the heaviest first, then return until they've carried them all away. A birdbath with heater is a reliable way to attract winter birds: Even if they can find food in the wild they're always thirsty for a drink.
