Two Beautiful Corvids
We recently watched a Jay take a long piece of string from our neighbour’s rose bush. The string was probably destined for its nest, and the bird spent several minutes collecting it into a manageable bundle before taking off with its prize.
As we watched the Jay manipulate the bundle, it seemed to us that here was a bird dealing with a problem in a very thoughtful way.
Eurasian Jays are beautiful birds and highly intelligent. Along with Ravens, they are often the subject of research of comparative psychologists because there seem to be a lot of parallels between the way they problem solve and learn, and the way we humans do.
Experiments with captive Eurasian Jays have illustrated their ability to use tools, their capacity to empathise with their mates in a human-like way, and have measured their conceptual understanding and compared it with the intellectual development of children.
The Work of Jean Piaget
The work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget is a cornerstone of our understanding on how children’s thinking and learning skills develop from birth to early teens. Piaget’s observations and theories illustrate the different stages of thinking that children need to go through as they develop. These stages can be measured through a series of tests that demonstrate ability to think and problem solve in particular ways.
When put through the same tests, Jays show that their intellectual functioning is at least as high as that of young children (for the teachers and psychologists among you they reach Piagetian Stage 6). See for example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6560049_Piagetian_object_permanence_and_its_development_in_Eurasian_jays_Garrulus_glandarius
The Value of the Jay to Woodland Management
This high level of conceptual development enables the Jay to hide and find objects with ease, which they do during autumn when they bury caches of acorns for their winter larder. (Video – Woodcock Wood 2019: https://youtu.be/3sJagutahRs).
They select only healthy acorns and tend to bury them in glades and on the edge of woodland, the perfect spot for germination. Isabella Tree provides a lovely description of how they do this in Chapter 7 of “Wilding” (2018).
The contribution they make to the dispersal of the acorn and the growth of new oak. gives the Eurasian Jay a real economic value to woodland management: https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Garrulus_glandarius/.
Distribution of the Azure-winged Magpie
The Eurasian Jay is superficially similar in appearance to its relative the Azure-winged Magpie. But unlike the Eurasian Jay, which has an enormous distribution across Europe and Asia, the Azure-winged Magpie is confined to just the centre and south of the Iberian peninsular, where it is locally common, and to a large area covering parts of China, Japan, and Korea. The two populations of course are entirely independent.
Azure-winged Magpies in Parque National de Monfragüe
We frequently visit a campsite on the edge of Parque Nacional de Monfragüe (https://www.parquedemonfrague.com), and always head for a spot where a stone wall separates the site from the Dehesa, the groves of cork oak typical of the area. From there we watch the family groups of Azure-winged Magpies moving among the trees, and it’s not long before they are in the campsite’s shade trees on the look out for something tasty.
Going back several years to our first trip there, we arrived during the height of the cherry season, and were laden with fruit. The magpies were delighted. Putting two or three cherries on the ground, they were soon down to collect them, taking a few moments to look up as if to see where the cherries came from. A bit of anthropomorphising no doubt, but considering how intelligent the birds are, perhaps not.
More than the physical appearance of this bird, it is their canniness that strikes a similar chord with the Eurasian Jay.
Social Behaviour of the Azure-winged Magpie and the Eurasian Jay
Outside of the breeding season the Eurasian Jay tends to be solitary, although small groups gather at times, as we’ve observed occasionally in Spain and Portugal, and in Woodcock Wood.
The Azure-winged Magpie however is a gregarious species. Several family groups comprise a flock, and during the breeding season a proportion of the flock help breeding pairs with nest building and the care of young.
Like the Jay, Azure-winged Magpie’s eat significant amounts of insects and other small creatures, especially during the spring and summer. During winter they revert to a higher proportion of seeds and fruit. And although we have seen them mainly in the cork oak areas of Spain and Portugal, they are not wedded in the same way as the Jay to the harvesting of acorns.
How the Azure-winged Magpie would fare against the Jay in the Piagetian tests is a moot point. But rather than strive to put this to the test perhaps we should just enjoy the opportunity, whenever it arises, to sit back and watch the antics of these lovely birds.