Bird Behavior at Feeders

I decided to start another thread on bird behavior at the feeders. I am a newbie Bird Watcher and new to bird feeders, so everything fascinates me with this newfound hobby!

I have a post feeder with a number of feeders on it. See thread: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/690200/

I noticed some very interesting behavior this morning at the feeder. I have Blue Jays. Apparently more than one. It looks like 3 from what I can tell coming to the feeders. I female and 2 males. These birds love the peanuts in the shell! One of the males dropped his peanut and the other male flew down and grabbed it. With the original finder chasing him! LOL

Then I saw one of the males come back to the feeder for more and the other male came flying in at him. Apparently he attacked him because I saw feathers floating everywhere! Is this common behavior? Are Blue Jays territorial?

I've seen them dive bomb a cat! If they do that I imagine they are pretty territorial.

So far, I havent notice much that isnt territorial. I have no friends at the feeders. We did just have a pair of house finches, which is rare down here. They seemed to be allowed to stay at the feeder with anyone...and stay they did. Most of our other birds wont feed so long at a time, its grab and go. I did see two new birds this week. A yellow bellied fly catcher and a yellow throated warbler. The warbler is small, but was very pretty. The flycatcher never went to the feeder, it stayed down in the limbs i have stacked up.

Thanks, gardenglory and KKB, too!

That explains why I rarely see more than one bird at the feeder at a time. (I didn't know.) Though I often see what is probably a mating pair sharing the feeders. Very interesting.

Are the birds afraid of the squirrels? The Blue Jay is the only one that seems to ignore the squirrel eating on the ground below the feeders.

Becky, The squirrels can sometimes be pretty aggresive towards the birds, thats why some are timid around them.

Is there anyplace else you could put the squirrel feeder?

This message was edited Feb 4, 2007 5:02 PM

You could always take the shelled peanuts away if you don't like the fighting BJ's.

Pell - I didn't know that about the squirrels, so yes! I need to lure any squirrels away from the bird feeders to somewhere else in the yard so they don't keep the birds away.

As far as the fighting Blue Jays .... it was just that one fight so far. We'll see if it continues to happen. I'm almost afraid to exclude the Blue Jays as they are the birds that spark the interest to the feeders! Once they come to it, usually the other birds start coming too. Their "squawking" seems to alert any other birds in the area that it's mealtime. They are always the first ones to the feeders.

Thats why I told you about the peanuts. They are such noisy guys,lol.

Becky, in all the years I have been feeding Jays (a lot of years), I have never had a problem with them fighting each other. They seem to get along great together. They usually are the first to notice new food at the feeder, and they do LOVE their peanuts.

I've never seen them fight either just a bit of bumping. But there can always be one thats more aggresive I guess.