If there is one bird for me that is synonymous with October, it is the one the French call the ‘Geai of the oaks’, the Dutch the ‘Gaai’, and the Germans the ‘Eichelhaher’ – the Oak Jay.
The names Geai, Gaai and our name, Jay, are all onomatopoeic, derived from the same source – the harsh, rasping call.
At this time of year, every journey you go on you seem to see them. In ones and twos, sometimes more, they flap languidly but purposely on their butterfly wings, ranging over towns and villages, woods and fields. And it is all in search of acorns.
There are, of course, way too many acorns to be eaten right now, so it is time for the Jays to collect and stash them.
It has been calculated that one Jay will collect in the region of 5000 acorns in autumn, working 10 hours a day to do so, and flying 100 miles a day, backwards and forwards, to suitable clearings and woodland edges where they can bury them just under the earth. Those caches include my garden, as I disturbed a Jay only last weekend ramming a gullet load of acorns into my vegetable patch!
This was one doing just the same at Anglesey Abbey which I visited last week.
...And a second photo to show it didn't fall down its own acorn hole
So keep your eyes peeled right now for one of our most glamorous birds. By the winter, most will have melted back into the woodlands from whence they came to secretly live out the rest of the year, making the odd foray back out to try and find where they left those 5000 acorns!
If you want to drop by my RSPB wildlife gardening blog, it is updated every Friday, and I'd love to see you there - www.rspb.org.uk/community/blogs/hfw
I have one going back & forth in the garden don't have any acorn's thou might have to get him some from somewhere. lol
Alternatively they'll find your peanut feeder and empty that as many times as you fill it up!
"Let loose the Kraken!"