How to Attract Blue Jays to Your Yard

Blue jay basics

The blue jay lives across the eastern and central U.S. and southern Canada, and is present year-round in most of that range. Some jays migrate, sometimes in visible flocks along the Great Lakes and Atlantic Coast in fall, while others stay put. Researchers still don’t fully understand why. West of the Rockies, the jays at your feeder are more likely Steller’s jays or scrub-jays, which like similar foods. All About Birds has range maps.

Blue jays are social and vocal. They often imitate hawk calls, especially red-shouldered hawk, and cache food for later.

What blue jays eat

Acorns and other nuts are staple foods, along with seeds, grains, fruit and insects. Jays carry and bury acorns, and the ones they never recover help oaks spread. At feeders they prefer:

• Peanuts in the shell: the classic jay draw. Watch them carry peanuts off to cache.
• Shelled, unsalted peanuts and black-oil sunflower.
• Suet, especially in winter.
• Cracked corn in small amounts on a platform. It also attracts squirrels and blackbirds.

Feeders

Jays are large and like room to land. They use:

• Platform or tray feeders: ideal for peanuts and sunflower. Pick one with a mesh floor for drainage.
• Hopper feeders with a wide ledge.
• Peanut wreath or ring feeders that hold in-shell peanuts, which jays pull free.

Jays can dominate a feeder for a few minutes at a time. If smaller birds are getting crowded out, give the jays their own platform of peanuts a little apart from your tube feeders. They’ll mostly stick to it.

Habitat and plants

• Oaks are the single best tree for jays, for acorns and the insects oaks host. Beech and hickory are also valuable.
• Mixed trees and shrubs along an edge give cover and nest sites.
• Fruiting natives like dogwood, serviceberry and elderberry add late-summer food.

Nesting

Blue jays build stick nests in the crotch or outer branches of trees, often somewhere between about 10 and 25 feet up. Both adults gather material. They don’t use nest boxes. During the breeding season they’re quiet and secretive near the nest, which surprises people used to their noisy winter behavior.

Blue jays occasionally eat eggs or nestlings of other birds. Studies of their diet find this is a small part of what they eat. Mostly they are nut and seed eaters.

Water

Jays bathe often. A sturdy bath with a wide rim, in the open near trees, suits them. See the bird bath guide.

Blue jay quick reference

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