🐦

Jay

Garrulus glandarius

2 photos

1 photographer

·Common · 1 pts

Colourful crow with striking blue wing patch.

2 community photos of Jay on Things With Wings. Top-rated shots often use around 1/1600ss shutter, 300mm.

Species Profile

Green List (Least Concern); population stable in the UK

Lifespan: 5–17 years in the wild; average 5–8 years
Size & Weight: 34–35 cm long, wingspan 52–58 cm; 140–190 g
Habitat: Deciduous and mixed woodlands, mature gardens, parks, and scrubland with good tree cover.
UK Distribution: Found throughout England, Wales, and southern Scotland; absent from far north Scotland and Ireland. Resident year-round with populations bolstered by continental visitors in autumn and winter.
Diet: Omnivorous, feeding on acorns and other seeds, nuts, berries, insects, spiders, and small vertebrates including nestlings of other birds.
Prey: Small birds, eggs, nestlings, insects, spiders, and small mammals such as voles and shrews
Predators: Sparrowhawks, Goshawks, Buzzards, Tawny Owls, foxes, and domestic cats
Mating Season: March to July
Breeding: Clutch of 3–5 eggs (typically 4); incubation period 16–17 days; fledging 19–20 days; usually one brood per year.
Behaviour: Jays are highly intelligent, bold, and noisy, with loud, harsh alarm calls. They are primarily arboreal but often visit ground feeders and gardens. They are known for caching acorns in autumn, inadvertently aiding oak regeneration across the UK.

Did You Know?

•Jays can mimic the calls of other birds, including Buzzards and Tawny Owls, particularly when alarmed.
•A single Jay can bury and cache thousands of acorns in autumn; many are forgotten and grow into new oak trees.
•Jays have a striking pattern with bright blue wing patches, white underparts, and a distinctive black malar stripe.
•They are the only members of the crow family (Corvidae) in the UK with predominantly warm plumage rather than black or grey.
•Continental Jays regularly migrate to the UK in autumn in 'invasion years', sometimes in large numbers when acorn crops fail in northern Europe.

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Shutter

1/1600ss

ISO Range

400–800

Aperture

f/f/5.6

Focal Length

300mm

🐦 Eurasian Jay

Bird

🐦 Jay

Bird