Last Sunday I was popping over to B&Q with my boys and whilst we were walking to the car, which was parked near to some small woods, we heard this awful screeching noise! At first I though it was a crow making a strange noise but when I managed to spot the offending bird, it wasn’t black like a crow and a bit smaller. I watched and listened to it for a few seconds until it crossed my mind that it looked a similar size to a Jay and I had heard somewhere before that they can make a screeching noise like we were hearing. Though I had never seen a Jay before so I was going off prior knowledge and not experience.
Luckily, I had a pair of binoculars in the car so I whipped them out and had a look. I was correct! It was a Jay jumping about on the branches, looking quite agitated at something. I think it must have been a pregnant female as it was huge in the mid-drift so perhaps it was being harrassed by another bird, although I couldn’t see another one anywhere near it. If there were any, they would probably have been scared off by the horrible noise it was making anyway!
My two young boys were interested as well so they had a look in our bird book that we kept in the car for these sorts of occasions, so they should now know what a Jay looks and sounds like. Ben, my 4 year old, tried to have a look through the binoculars but the Jay moved further away at that point and was hidden behind several more trees and branches, which was a shame!
But I was very pleased to see my first Jay and now know that there must be at least one, and possible a breeding pair, in our nearby woods. I will be keeping an eye out for them from now on, that’s for sure! Hopefully, next time I see the Jay, I will have my DSLR camera on me so I can try and get some good photographs of it as that would be fantastic
Here is an image from the RSPB website of a Jay.
