Birds of Central Oklahoma

All birds Crows, Jays, and Magpies

Blue Jay, adult
Adult Photo by Darren Swim. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Blue Jay

Cyanocitta cristata

Here all year.

Recorded by Don Bright. CC BY, via iNaturalist, trimmed and volume evened out.

Look for

  1. Blue on top, with a blue crest on its head.
  2. A white face and a pale gray belly. A black band goes across the neck like a necklace.
  3. White bars on the wings. The long tail has thin black stripes and white corners.

A little about it

Blue jays live here all year. Males and females look the same. Listen for their loud "jay! jay!" call.

At feeders, they eat peanuts and black-oil sunflower seeds. Out in the woods, they eat acorns, berries, and bugs. Most of their food comes from plants.

A blue jay holds a seed down with its feet and hammers the shell open with its bill. It may grab a few seeds at once and hide them around the neighborhood for later. It also buries acorns in holes in the ground.

Both parents build the nest in a tree, most often 8 to 30 feet up. It's a big cup of twigs, and they sometimes add bits of paper or string. The female lays 4 or 5 eggs. The young leave the nest about 17 to 21 days after they hatch.

Fun fact

A blue jay can copy the scream of a Red-shouldered Hawk. It sounds almost the same as the real hawk.

When it's here

Taller bars mean more sightings. Most often seen in June.

How big

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10 to 12 inches. A little bigger than a robin.

Where to look

Woods with oak trees, and neighborhoods and parks with big, old trees. Blue jays come to feeders too.

  • At feeders
  • Yards and parks
  • In the woods

People have spotted it at Lake Thunderbird State Park, Mitch Park, Myriad Botanical Gardens.

Could it be something else?

  • Eastern Bluebird

    Also blue, but it's smaller, with a shorter tail and no crest. A bluebird has a red-orange chest.

Where these facts come from