Cool Blue Jay Flight Tricks

Can A Blue Jay Do Tricks?

Last winter I was putting out food on a cold weekday morning. As usual, the Blue Jays had spotted me and were squawking for peanuts. I’ve always found it uncanny how there won’t be one in my backyard until I toss peanuts onto my aggregate patio and the sound attracts them. Seemingly out of nowhere, they fly in from the four corners. It cracks me up.

That morning was no different. I set out my platform feeder feeder and went back inside to get some peanuts for it and the area around it. When I came out, there was a Blue Jay perched on the gutter behind me just staring at me. Because they are so quick to start I turned back around and went back to what I was doing. I turned around again and he was still perched there. I thought he looked like a pet waiting for a treat so I decided to give him one. I turned back away from him, took one peanut and tossed it straight up in the air just a little higher than he was perched. I almost fell over when he snagged it out of the air!

That’s right. He just aimed and snagged it. I’d never seen anything like it before.

For the next few weeks that year, he would deliberately perch up there and I would toss peanuts so he could catch them. Sometimes he would perch in the tree in front of me but the result was the same.

I tried to get a photograph but I was one person trying to toss and shoot and it just didn’t happen. When anybody else went out with me he would fly away.

It’s important for me to clarify one thing. At no point did I ever throw the peanuts AT him. In fact, most of the time I would purposely not even look in his direction while tossing them straight up.

All Good Things…

One morning I went out there and he was gone. For the next few days, I looked for him to no avail. Either he had migrated or found somebody tossing better food-HA!

I’ll be searching for him again this winter and hope that if he doesn’t return that he has taught another how to do his cool Blue Jay flight tricks.

Have you had a similar experience? Leave me a comment below and share it with all.