A jay taking a pit stop while doing its rounds

What a wet night and day. It has rained now for at least twenty-four hours., and is till doing so. The cloud cover has been so thick that the light seems like mid-winter’s day. Grey, grey, grey.

However it has become one of the busiest days in the garden for birds as I’m sure they’ve been flocking to our bird feeders with so little food available elsewhere.  We’ve had robins, blackbirds, nuthatches, dunnocks, goldfinches, a blackcap, blue tits, coal tits, thrushes, magpies, crows and now this jay.

I’d mentioned to helena yesterday that I thought I had seen one fly up the valley and land in the ash tree at the bottom of the garden. This ash is a favourite landing spot often harbouring the regular crows, pigeons and magpies. But it sometimes hosts a heron on one of the topmost branches where it looks down the gardens eyeing up the pondlife for fish. 

In other years I’d noted that jays would fly up the valley and land on the same upper branches but often only for a minute. It was as if they were resting at a service station. I did a bit of online reach and read that they often bury their autumnal food in a winter store underground and are prepared to transport it quite long distances. Soon after I clocked one coming backwards and forwards up the valley with occasional halts on these branches. It was then I realised that they had acorns held in their beaks. 

Just as I was stopping my birdwatching this morning I saw the telltale flight of a jay and raised my camera and caught this shot just as it prepared to land in the ash tree. It stayed for only a few seconds and then took off in the same direction up the valley, but my pictures were too blurred although the flight patterns were amazing.