The particularly observant and ornithologically biased eye will have noticed recently that our neighborhood blue jays are busy. Doing what, you ask? Winter is coming, and blue jays across the Northeast have begun preparing for it. As humans, we worry about the colder temperatures and dangerous storms associated with winter. While these factors certainly pose a threat to blue jays as well, the main threat for them is a reliable source of food during the winter months. What if there was a food source of generally high abundance now that could be stored and eaten later when no other food sources exist? Turns out, there is — acorns!
So yes, blue jays are busy collecting and storing, or "caching," acorns from many species of trees, though primarily oaks. In this process, blue jays will visit a tree with acorns, collect a couple (as many as they can comfortably hold in their beak, which is usually two or three), find a place on the ground and bury the acorns in a small, tight circle. The burial site changes for every visit — placing all of one's food source in a single spot leaves it vulnerable to discovery by other animals or to destruction by stochastic weather events. The location and distance of each burial site largely depend on the individual blue jay, but some individuals cache acorns several kilometers away from their home range. Blue jays don’t limit themselves in how many acorns they cache, either; some individuals have cached over 5,000 acorns in just one fall season! And no, no blue jay remembers all the areas where they cached acorns. They just incessantly hoard them and, due to the sheer quantity of cached acorns, can survive through the winter. It must be dreadfully frustrating for squirrels.
Excessive food hoarding is far from unique to birds. Have you ever watched those doomsday prep shows where paranoid guys in Alaska store like 100,000 cans of beans? That’s the same thing blue jays are doing, except with acorns instead of beans. Heck, I witness micro-caching at the dining hall every day. There are just some people that have no concept of regulation in regard to food selection and, as a result, will take everything they see like a preppy lax bro at a Brooks Brothers factory sale. Don’t believe me? Watch the plates at the dish drop-off area next time you’re at the dining hall, and you’ll see what I mean. Whole slices of pizza, untouched pieces of pie, full glasses of milk. People hoard the food like they’ll never eat again and then obviously can’t finish it all, so it all ends up going to waste.
One blue jay can’t eat the 5,000 acorns that it cached within a two-kilometer radius of its home range, so many of them freeze in the ground. But unlike human food waste, at least there’s a chance that the forgotten acorns will germinate and become oak trees some day in the future. Always remember — snacking is good, surviving is great, but wasting is selfish. So don’t do it.
Love,
Henry
