Today I saw a Jay bird in my garden...

[ben_zen]

This morning I heard what I thought was a cat meowing on the plastic conservatory roof outside my bedroom window, I also heard the shuffle of a bird, thinking that a cat was just about to make a kill right by my window, I looked out but instead of a cat there was this beautiful bird meowing and then scwalking like a crow, it flew down to my garden and then flew off somewhere. I described the bird to a friend and he said it sounded like a
Blue Jay so I searched the net and there it was. I live in Montpelier, Bristol which is quite central and have never seen one before. It made my day though :)

[storye_book]

I agree, jays can be great - but there can be problems too. We have a local farm manager of the traditional kind, and he used to regularly shoot crows, including jays, on his land - he was licensed and it was his job. He was a good guy who otherwise protected roe deer etc, but we were glad when he retired and so stopped shooting. Suddenly we had jays for the first time screeching in our trees, and bringing their scruffy, greedy babies to our bird tables. But we also had well-established spotted flycatchers, who had their work cut out to scare off the jays. So we emptied the bird tables, but by then the flycatchers had left, permanently.

There has been a general decline in numbers of flycatchers in recent years, and I'm wondering whether this could be connected to crow-shooting going out of fashion in some areas, causing a general increase in jays? It would be interesting to know whether there has been an increase in jay numbers, and if so, why.