What if King Jay was simply exacting tribute from his minion, woodpecker,
with the promise not to eat her eggs this season?
On a serious note, I wonder if there's evidence of interspecific
relationships of domination and submission, especially given the
intelligence and well-documented sociality of the corvids.
Greg
Vergennes


On 5/9/08, Jane Stein <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I've not seen any newly fledged birds yet, including Bluejays, and they're
> pretty hard to miss, especially the food begging noise!
>
> In the case of my two confused birds, misplaced courtship seems to me more
> likely what was going on with the Bluejay, and one can't blame the Bluejay
> for not recognizing that the woodpecker it was displaying to was a female,
> nor the woodpecker for mistaking courtship begging for fledgling begging, I
> guess.
>
> Still, very peculiar.
>
> Jane
> Shoreham
>
>
>
> June Schulte wrote:
>
>> Has anyone seen newly fledged birds yet?
>>
>> I sent Jane's question about the Bluejay being fed suet by a Downy
>> Woodpecker to
>> my son who is a wildlife biologist, and below is his take on it.   ~ June
>> in Jericho
>>
>>
>>
>> My guess is that this is a recently fledged blue jay and the downy
>> woodpecker has young back in the nest. The blue jay is begging to anything
>> it sees that has food and the downy woodpecker's feeding response is
>> triggered by the behavior since it is geared up to feed babies at the
>> moment. Birds are usually triggered to feed their young by the begging sound
>> and the sight of the bright yellow/orange/red lining of the mouth of young
>> birds. I guess this is just one overstimulated woodpecker. Pretty funny.
>>  The only other option is that female blue jays will display like that to
>> males as part of the courtship display, but I doubt one would do that to a
>> woodpecker!
>>
>>
>>