Anyone noticing Blue Jays...

Imitating the call of the Red tailed Hawk? Mine are doing it all the time.
Pretty funny. My parrot also imitates them.

Mine have imitated the Red-shouldered Hawk....several times I have dashed out the door in hopes of seeing the Hawks and instead seeing a Blue Jay.

I have a Steller's jay that mimics a cockatiel, does that count?

I've fallen victim to blue jay sounds before. I didn't know that they can make a low throated rattling noise. I thought there was a rattlesnake up in my tree, and I rather made a fool of myself covering my head with my arms and running, screaming like a banshee, into the house.

But to answer the original question, I have heard a blue jay mimic a hawk before. I, like gardenpom, ran outside eagerly looking for the hawk, and found the blue jay instead. But I wasn't too disappointed, because it was the first time I'd ever seen a blue jay. :)

yes, I have heard it. There have not been many jays around this summer. This one came to feed late in the day.

Ha, you guys sound like me. They can imitate them pretty well, can't they? I knew they did that before I saw & heard them do it, cause I listened to the audio file on this site - http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/birdsong.php?id=5 Another DG member posted the link in the backyard bird list thread... I think it was Tabasco, can't remember right now. We have red-tailed hawks, for sure, so they might be imitating them. But my dad and I have recently spotted 2 other types of hawks, too. They're smaller and we aren't sure what they are yet, but they fly LOW! Dad said one was 15 feet above the deck and when I was in the yard, one flew about 10 feet above me. Cool but kinda scary!

So, Pelletory, you said you have a parrot? What kind do you have? I have 2, an African Grey and a Lovebird (they're little, but they're parrots, too!). And Stellapathic, you said your jays imitate a cockatiel? Do you have cockatiels? How about some pix of your pet birdies, people? Hmmmmm?

I'm mad at my MJ, my African Grey. He bit my face really bad a couple of weeks ago. My fault for being stupid, but I'm still kinda mad at him. (He's saying, "Are you sorry, Momma, owie?" over and over as I type this, lol.) So, here's a pic of my lovebird, Nosey. She's usually the biter, lol.

~Kris

YES!! I can't believe you posted this Pel!! I have been mulling over asking about this myself. This is the first year that I have noticed this. Maybe its just the first year I actually caught a blue jay making the hawk cry with my own eyes and they have been doing it for years and I just thought it was a hawk lol!! I wonder if jays imitate other cries as well.

Ouch! I bet that hurt a lot Iris. :-( What a cute little lovebird!

Thanks, Lilyfantn! Yep, it hurt ALOT right when it happened, but not after it was over, luckily. I had to get a tentus shot and antibiotics, though. It's almost healed now. :)

~Kris

I heard the Jays screaming at the Harlan's hawk the other night. I saw the hawk so I know it wasn't the Jays. I did not know that Jays imitated other birds. I'll have to pay closer attention.

Lousy photo but proof anyway!

Hi Iris, I have an African Congo Grey named Teddy. We've had him for 17 years.

Very talented parrots, loads of talking, singing and imitating every sound they hear.

I'll have to post a pic later, can't find one right now.

Ahh Yes!! Our Jays mimic hawks all the time.Scares our poor songbirds out of their feathers this time of year.Now....come fall the Bluejays are excellent at warning all of the other birds when there is a hawk in the vicinity so all can take cover.hmmm maybe they are doing drill practice now.

I think my other birds are getting used to it.

Jays are crying Hawk too often here,lol.

I was visiting Pelletory over Christmas several years ago, and at one point I heard Pel and her husband talking to each other and wasn't till a few minutes Iater I realized it was actually Teddy doing the talking! Amazing how well he can imitate his Mommy and Daddy.

What a riot Pom!! There is a good side and bad side to that... the bad side is I guess you have to watch what you say around Teddy lol - the good side is that its even better than leaving a radio on inside the house when you are gone! :-) What a great bird Teddy must be!

Original_Sybil... hey, that's a better pic of a hawk than I usually get, lol!

Pelletory - awww, I thought you had a Grey! They're awesome, aren't they? MJ's only 9, but my grandma had Mindo for 30-some years. They are the best at imitating voices and inflections, perfectly. And scary smart, too!

I think the Blue Jays like scaring the little birds with their hawk calls! I just imagine them laughing in the trees, hehe!

Kristy... here's a pic of MJ being a dork, lol, I'm not mad at him anymore. ;P

I have six cockatiels (5 rescue birds, and one "princess" I got as a baby, but is now 18 years old, and a bit wobbly). When I am at work, they spend their days in a large floor cage that I wheel into a sun room. The sun room is on the second floor, where they look out into tree tops, and I have the windows open, so they see and hear lots of birds all day long. They don't seem to react to any of the birds, but every time a blue jay calls, at least one of the cockatiels answers back. Also, when I sneeze, even if I am far away and out of sight, I get a cockatiel chirp in reply. I guess I'll never know why this happens. No talkers in the group, though, but cockatiels are not known for their talking ability.

Susan in Minneapolis

OK... The no no feeder... I have one and love the whole concept of it... how the perching birds can cling, etc.
But the squirrels... oh the squirrels... I even put a mandarin baffler over the feeder and the little buggers can catch the feeder when they fall and pull themselves up on it and commence to grazing.
Do you just let 'em eat, Pelletory?

This message was edited Jul 25, 2007 12:46 PM

Mine is on a baffled pole system. When I had put it on a tree the squirrels bent all the wiring on that feeder so I took it out. The squirrel buster is the only one I can put in a tree w/out them destroying it.
I do like the no no feeder too.

Heard some new sounds from the jays but their not bird calls. It sounds like their imitating some type of odd machinery. LOL; what next ?

Teddy likes to imitate people blowing their noses!

Hehehe.

My Grey says "ouch" just before she bites.

Our Jays clear the other birds off the feeder with the hawk cry. It works pretty well, but sometimes a hawk comes to check it out.

Now that could be trouble!

Jay quickly hides.

Talks big but can't walk the walk!

Yep. Smart.

Yeah, I was wondering if the hawks ever responded to a "fake" call. That could be trouble. Trois, MJ is the same way. If he keeps saying, "Sorry, Momma, owie," I know he's thinking about biting me! At least they give us a bit of a warning sometimes, huh?

~Kris (I need to join THA - "Thread-Hijackers Anonymous," LOL!)

Anonymous?

LOL, okay, maybe not anonymous, but something that will make me stop, lol.

~Kris

I've even had the Stellers mimic puppies. It took me 3 days to locate the sound, knowing there were no puppies nearby at the time.

One of the strangest was my son and I were walking down a street when we lived in Houston, and heard a playground full of children. We finally located a couple of Jays that seemed to be having fun at our expense. There was no playground nearby.

trois, wow, that's weird (and impressive, lol). What did it sound like, kids talking and laughing?

~Kris

Yep, sounded just like a school yard at recess. I guess it's just envelope sound to them. Whatever enters their ears and gets their curiosity going.

Wow, that's funny. And I thought when a catbird "meowed" at me, it was weird, lol.

~Kris

IrisLover79, we also have smaller low flying hawks. They are Merlins, and they can and do chase and catch Doves flying through the trees. They also have taken several Mockingbirds off my roadside mailbox. I have never heard them make a sound though.

trois

Whoa. A Merlin can grab birds that big? I thought they were about the size of a Kestrel. Must be larger, huh?

~Kris

They are larger than a Kestrel. I don't know if they take Mourning doves, but for sure Inca doves, which are much smaller.

trois

Merlins are open country birds - tundra, prairie, coastal saltmarsh, etc. They don't hunt through trees, their wings are the wrong shape for it, long and slender, means not much manoeuvrability through branches.

I'd suspect what you had was Sharp-shinned Hawk, which is very much a woodland raptor (short, broad wings: not so fast in the open, but better sharp turning agility to get round branches).

Resin

I get the blue jays in my garden regularly, and we see red shouldered hawks flying around, but I do like seeing the bald eagles we get a few nests around here. I get the birds lined up on the fence in a pecking order - which I think is great!

Resin, I would respectfully disagree about the Merlin. We have a lot of open marsh areas with scattered trees. The chase starts in open areas, but they will not stop from going through trees in order to keep after the bird. Our local Audubon Society does identify these as Merlins, and Sharp-shinned Hawks seem to not be common here.
The color is a great deal lighter for the Merlins.

trois