I have been spreading seed on my upstairs deck during the bad weather. Yesterday a couple of Blue Jays stopped by to sample the peanuts. In less than a minute a mockingbird came in and chased both the Blue Jays away, even though the mocker had not been feeding on the deck. I was surprised to see the mocker was dominant over the jays.
Here is one of my favorite descriptions of the Blue Jay, from the Bent Life History Series, written by Winsor Marrett Tyler.
These jays seemed to have taken the crafty retreat approach.
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The blue jay is a strong, healthy-looking bird, noisy and boisterous. He gives us the impression of being independent, lawless, haughty, even impudent, with a disregard for his neighbors' rights and wishes: like Hotspur, as we meet him in Henry IV, part 1.


To be sure, the jay has his quiet moments, as we shall see, but his mercurial temper, always just below the boiling point, is ever ready to flare up into rage and screaming attack, or, like many another diplomat, beat a crafty retreat. He is a strikingly beautiful bird: blue, black, and white, big and strong, his head carrying a high, pointed crest which in anger shoots upward like a flame. Walter Faxon long ago told me of a distinguished visiting English ornithologist who was eager to see a live blue jay because he considered it the finest bird in the world. He was surprised to find that this beauty, as he called it, is one of our common birds."
By the way, the blue in the feathers of a Blue Jay is from light refraction, not a blue pigment. Shielded from light, they are a grayish color.
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