Just remembering my baby Jay Bird

Category: Pinkies LIfe | Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 3:50 pm

I told the story when I first got here to this site but yesterday, I saw a huge Blue Jay at the feeder and it made me think of Jay. He entered our lives this time last year.....>sigh< I do miss him. Then this morning, I was looking through some pics and found alot of pics of him I had forgotten about. It just made me miss him even more. For those who have never heard the story of my Jay the bluejay or havent heard the whole story, here it is.

We had a nasty storm move through Jacksonville, Fl this time last year. It came up fast and the wind was really kicking everything up.

After the storm passed, I headed out in to the garden to see how everything fared. I happen to look up towards where we had a honey bee hive and there was a baby Bluejay trying to catch bees. He didnt have much in the way of adult feathers. He was trying his hardest to catch a bee....poor guy was hungery.

Well, I turned my back on him to walk towards the street and when I turned back around, he had made a very clumsy flight to the roof of my truck, barely making it. He sat there watching me, squaking...making all kinds of racket. Suddenly, he just flew right at me and landed right in my hand!

He looks at me and made some very pitful noises, so I took him over to a wooden beam we had in the yard. I turned it over and set him on the ground to eat. He watched the bugs but I dont think understood how to do it so I picked up bugs for him to eat.

Well, That night I called the local wildlife center and they told me they couldnt take him BUT wouldnt tell me how to care for him!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!??? They told me to just let him go and let Mother Nature take its course. >snort< Yeah, like I was going to let that happen.

I went to the local pet store and the guy there gave me mealworms and wild bird seed to feed him. He also told me to mix some grits with warm water and finger feed it to him along with the worms and seeds.

So, off I went to learn how to take care of a wild bird. I even had a special call for just him...it sounded nothing like a Bluejays call...more like clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth. He would answer it or come to me.When I fed him the grits , we were both covered in the sticky stuff. He would then ruffle his feathers and shake like a dog and I would have even more grits on me!!! LOL HE would just look at me and chirp when I told him to not do that. I would have it everywhere! Rob had even found grits in my hair after one very messy feeding! HAHA!

Well,every night he would sleep up in the top of my bedroom closet. As soon as the sun would go down, he would make these cute little cooing noises to let me know he was sleepy and I would take him to bed.I had placed a old sheet up there and made like a nest of sorts. I would hold him up and he would just hop into bed. I would awaken throughout the night hearing him make those cooing noises.

He would wake me up BEFORE the sun came up. After the first couple of mornings, he would just squak very loud just once and stand at the very edge of the top shelf and look at me. All I had to do his hear it once and I was up ,ready to feed him his first meal of the day.

After I would feed him his grits, I would place him next to a shallow dish of water and watch him bath. That was the funniest thing to watch!!!

After his bath, I would put him on my shoulder and walk out side to water the gardens. In the early days he was with us, I put him on the edge of my homemade planter and he would sit there and preen himself in the sun. I spent alot of time outside after he came to be with us. I didnt want him to use to being inside a human home. He would go to Rob too so we made sure he was scared of Rob. If he tried to get to Rob, he would make a very loud noise so Jay would be scared.

Well, after a week or so after coming to our house, I notied he was getting quite a few adult feathers.....I didnt know they grew that fast! So, I took to leaving him outside more and more when I went in. I would hear him calling me when he got hungery.

We had this huge oak tree behind our place and the branches overhung the roof. He would sit up there and call me. When I opened the door and walked outside, he would fly down and land where I could pick up and feed him. As he started learning to fly around, I was feeding him less and less, making him learn to catch his own food.

I had started doing it by placing the mealworms in a old metal baking pan and covering them with a few leaves. I had to point them out to him at first but soon he caught on to the "game" and would move the leaves to find them. After a few days of that, I added more leaves. I then started scattering birdseed around the ground so he would have to find them. He was happier with the mealworms and so I ended up with a bird seed garden! HAHAHA!

He was with us,I think about a month, but it seems longer than that so Im not real sure how long he was with us. Long enough that my neighbors thought I was nuts when I would walk outside and start making noises and a bird would fly to me! LOL One even saw me one morning come out and look up and start making strange noises and saw Jay fly to me! LOL Poor Scott thought he was seeing things until he come over to get a closer look. Word spread around the nieghbors pretty fast after that. I would get smiles and comments when they saw me outside with Jay or calling him. Cuz there towards the end, he would sit in his oak tree and call me but not come down for his feedings until the sun came down. Then all I had to do was open the door and he would fly inside.

Then we had another nasty storm move through and Jay was caught outside. I searched for him for weeks calling him.I was so worried that I couldnt sleep for days. I cried so much during those weeks of not knowing. Poor Rob. He didnt know what to do.I would go outside even at night, to listen for his cooing.

Twice, a grow BlueJay would sit in the oak tree right above the door and call. I would run outside and call back. He never came down so Im not 100% sure it was him. But after that last encounter with the BlueJay, there was no doubt it was him. I was outside working in the yard and a large BlueJay came and landed on the little tree next to our gate and called. I watched him and started talking to him. HE then jumped off the tree and hopped along the fence towards me. When I tried to get closer he flew off but spent the day around my yard ,calling whenever I came out or whenever I called to him.

That was the last time I ever saw him. We moved from Jacksonville at the end of Jan so I dont know if he went back come spring. It makes me sad to think that he went back ,calling me and I wasnt there to answer.

Heres some pics of him I took during his time with us.

This was just a few days after he found us. He was a ham for the camera! HAHA! He would strick a pose whenever he would see it. I had set him down to preen after his bath and was going to take pics of my Glads (in the background) and decided to take a pic of him.

Here his first lesson in catching mealworms. I didnt give him any grits for the first time and was trying to coach him into to picking them up. It didnt work too well. Unless I fed him, he would just watch them move around. Youll notice too that he was really starting to look like a BlueJay in these pics. His "mask" was getting darker and his top feathers were turning bluer. Sorry for the bad pics.

These were taken the same week he was caught in the storm and left. You can see he looks like a little BlueJay here. He was sitting in his little tree next to the gate calling me cuz he was hungery. I was purposely skipping his feeds tryng to force him into finding his own food. That day was a big day for him. I watched him catch a fly bug in mid flight! He just flew down from the oak tree and caught the bug as he flew by. I was so proud! I think he was too because he started hopping around ,making little clucking noises! LOL

Thats the story of my little Jay Bird. I so miss him!

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glendann wrote on Wed Jun 28, 2006 4:42 pm:

That is one of the cutest stories .You did know he could take care of himself so you didn't have to worry about him .He made a handsome feathered friend.

Gardenstew wrote on Fri Jun 30, 2006 5:16 pm:

That was a great read Denee. I can tell you miss him a lot. The first photo you posted is a classic!

I'm adding a link to this from this week's newsletter :D