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Thanksgiving came a little early and my guys got their bird! - LOL!

Seems there was a blue jay fight, or a stray cay went nuts!
I found two dead blue jays in my yard!

Here's Carla with the first one:

She just laid her eggs recently and I still haven't found where she made her nest in the pen! This meal will be really good for her as these guys will eat a whole bird - bones and all. So the calcium boost will come right in time seeing she has just laid eggs.

Here's Seymore with the other one:

He was soon joined by Tommy 2-Tone:

It was all gone within minutes.

Enjoy!

Bill Tracy
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My Turtle Stuff
My Box Turtle Site

Wow. Grisly but fascinating.

Okay i am no ornithologist and i ma sure this is going to sound like myth but blue jays can be very desructive. I once saw a cat find a nestling jay , which presumbaly had fallen from its nest. The cat toyed with it out in the open away from the wooded area where it found the bird and slowly tirtured it and left it for dead. All the while there was a tremendous eruption of bird squaks in the the wooded area nearby. After the cat left the bird and i assumed it (the bird, sorry for abiguous antecedent)was dead, i stopped watching. Hours later i walked by and found the cat dead and it looked like it had been shot with thousands of quarter inch thick needles. The woman who owned it told me the jays had been noisy all morning and that she had actually heard of this happening before.

Years later i told the story to a bird fancier friend of mine who assured me that jays kills all sorts of things that threaten nests and they do it in a communal fashion. I have never bothered to investigate whether there is "scientific" evidence for this phenomenon and i can't be sure that the birds killed the cat but i think of the story frequently. I further think the "revenge" theme seems implausible but i just thought i 'd share. I hope your boxies are okay. Anybody know anything about blue jays? Anybody (other than guess-venturers) wanna tell me if there is zero reason to believe these stories?

Interesting story - we have several pairs of Blue Jays that live on our block, and they can be quite aggressive, chasing Black Birds, other birds, and although I have never seen them chase a cat, they sure do make a ruccus when one is around. I have actually had them fly in my shed (Door partly closed), and go under plastic covers to catch super worms.

I've never heard of them going after cats, they do go after other birds (like robins) nests and kill and eat the chicks or eggs then if the nest suits them they will steal it,
I'd be more worried about pesticides that could have killed the birds,

I would also be cocerned about west nile virus, finding 2 birds together. Here in south/central NJ there are documented cases of dead birds found with the virus(was in the newspaper yesterday). I have friends in staten island who last year found dead bluejays in their yard and the dept. health tested the first 2 then told them to just discard the rest( heath dept. had too many to test, and no reason to test since they had the documented cases.) My friends found about 6-8 during the whole summer.
Phil

Thats an excellent point, and in fact blue jays and black birds (crows etc.) are considered to be 'indicator' birds : they are the first to be affected by west nile. I haven't heard of the virus' affect on other wildlife, but you might want to think about monitoring your turtles for a while, unless you know how the jays died (cat, collision with window, etc.)
Great photos! A terrific illustration of the meaning of "opportunistic omnivore"!!

I am not saying that the birds that Bill's turtles ate have any virus or anything else. Just a comment on the previous post - wasn't there a case of Alligators in Florida getting the West Nile Virus?

Yes, they did indeed find the virus in alligators in FL. By the way, I am sending you an email tonight with pics.

Steve

Cool - I have six Hermanns eggs - and quite a few may be gravid.

Excellent shots! I've always admired Carla. Happy you eggs from that big beautiful girl.

Paul

Thanks everyone. I did notice that these two really seemed to be victims of some sort of a fight or attack as they were pretty beat up when I found them. So I was pretty sure west nile or pesticides weren't the cause in this case.

And I have seen first hand how these guys will attack a cat, even if it just gets too close to a tree that has their nest in it.

Thankfully I have screened tops on all my pens, so hopefully they will be safe from any attempts of revenge - lol!

Thanks again,

Bill Tracy
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My Turtle Stuff
My Box Turtle Site

Yeah, blue jays can be vindictive. My cat almost pounced on a baby (I stopped him), but the cat was afraid to go outside for a few days, coz every time he did, he got dive-bombed!
Great pix! Thanks for sharing.
Stephanie

Wow i though i was going to get screamed at but this thread turned out to be very interesting. I had actually forgotten while i was writing that first post that when i was in college there was a blue jay which nested in front of one of the academic buildings that i frequented. I remember one day walking under this tree and hear a loud buzz, a squak and then feeling a pain in my ear. I ran dropped my bag of books and stumblingly turned around to find the jay chasing me. I avoided the tree the whole summer and everyone who didn't believe me found out the hard way. I had totally forgotten....uh aging.
Anyway The presence of a disease is, i guess, always a worry but then young birds fall out of trees all the time. I do hope your turtles don't get sick. And like everyone else said, great photos!