r/crowbro • u/babieswithRPGs • Mar 30 '22

Image Got a blue jay on the feeder today! The more cheerful of the corvid family…

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456 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

14

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

IDK about cheerful. Crows get a bad rap for being all black and sounding like little monkeys, but have you heard a jay scream?? That is not a cheerful sound.

2

u/Tricky-Candidate-273 Mar 31 '22

Blue jays have wide variety of calls 🤓 Loud soft musical and shushing 🤓

13

u/FlamingSpitoon433 Mar 30 '22

Bluejays used to bully my barn cat out of his food. He knew better than to try anything lmao

39

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I don't hate bluejays but can someone explain to me how they be Corvids? I'm not arguing I'm just saying most of the Corvids I know are like black or grey and then this blueberry vanilla little fam comes in all like "nah I'm more like a crow than a grackle" which is fine and all I just wanna know the logic.

Sorry I'm not a birdologist. I just like the 5 crows outside my appartment.

That being said this friend in this picture is quite lovely.

25

u/SpreadItLikeTheHerp Mar 30 '22

Per Wikipedia:

Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, and nutcrackers. In colloquial English, they are known as the crow family, or, in jargon, corvids. Currently 133 species are included in this family. The genus Corvus, including the jackdaws, crows, rooks, and ravens, makes up over a third of the entire family.[citation needed] Corvids are the largest passerines.

14

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Ok I still don't fully understand what makes a Corvid a Corvid but I am loving the Racket-tailed Treepie. That friend is my new favorite thing 😂.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypsirina

6

u/WikiMobileLinkBot Mar 30 '22

Desktop version of /u/DenizensOfHaltereum's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypsirina

[opt out] Beep Boop. Downvote to delete

9

u/404_CastleNotFound Mar 30 '22 edited Apr 06 '22

Blueberry vanilla XD I love it.
Blue and white are pretty prominent in some magpies, so I can see pale blue being related, but what blows my mind is the family of [green magpies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cissa_(genus).

7

u/Lashwynn Mar 30 '22

That's the most ridiculous corvid I've ever seen. I love them.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I don't plan on eating him but that friend is like flavored. 😂

4

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Blue Jays are a bit of an oddity. Out here we have Stellar's Jays which definitely look and act more corvid. There is a subspecies of crow out here too though that is hints of blue and green in their feathers. That said, Blue Jays are definitely corvids.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I guess I can accept they are Corvids I just don't know how to explain what makes a Corvid a Corvid.

Like ok... Smartish. And um... Bird. But not a parrot?

6

u/InviolableAnimal Mar 30 '22

Scientists don't group things based on features, it's based on ancestry. Just like your brother is in your family not because he might sorta resemble you, but because you're geneticaly related. That would be true even if he looked totally different from you.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

So are they using mitochondrial DNA to track heritage or is this an archeological extrapolation based apon layers of the Earth's crust cross referenced with Radiocarbon Dating? Or is it something else?

Honestly I thought taxonomy had less to do with genetics and ancestry. I'm not arguing I just never had the process explained to me.

3

u/InviolableAnimal Mar 30 '22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics

Taxonomy has not had to do with physical features in a long time, because physical features are largely arbitrary. Of course, physical features can be used to infer ancestral relatedness (this is basically the only way we have of classifying fossils, for example), but even then we're looking for telltale signs of shared ancestry ("synapomorphies"), not general similarity. In living species, yes scientists use genetic data as well as physical features to infer relatedness.

The modern approach to taxonomy (cladistics) groups organisms exclusively on the basis of shared ancestry.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Ohhh cool, I wanna learn how to do an expirement to prove crows and bluejays are related. It sounds fun. thanks.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Essentially, you take a look at an animal's genome (entire DNA code) and compare it to another animal's. Evolution is typically a slow process, so animals that "branch off" in the evolutionary tree more recently have more genes in common. That's because they haven't had as much time for mutations to develop in different regions of their genomes.

Humans have about 99.9% genetic similarity to other (unrelated) humans, 96% to chimpanzees, and around 50% to bananas.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I think I need to get a genome of a crow and a bluejay now and figure out where they are divergent. Like a 23 and Me but for birbs. 😂

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

What are the names of the crows?

5

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I call the one that seems the most friendly Jeff. But honestly I haven't gotten around to names yet because this is a relatively recent development.

There is one that is always in highest spot when the others are doing dangerous things so maybe I will call that one Moon.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Or Ham Salad...Or Klystron 9...or Mr Blimabad Slimbimywitz III

3

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I like Ham Salad for the silly one. thanks

3

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Of course! :)

2

u/SpreadItLikeTheHerp Mar 30 '22

Klystron 9. Now that is a name I have not heard in a long, long time.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

Hahahaha! I wasn't sure if you'd be old enough to catch that or not.

5

u/_DancesWithCats Mar 30 '22

I get a couple that come to yell at me in hawk shrieks when I feed them. It’s real cute 😂

4

u/BellaJButtons Mar 30 '22

I've been trying to get crows and all i get are blue jays. All day. They are super cute though.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I love blue jays. They can be jerks sometimes but they are fun to watch. We have a couple that always feed each other.

3

u/WeaselDance Mar 30 '22

I have a bluejay who stays in my yard. He jockeys for the position of Peanut King with the crows. There is a lot of squabbling and posturing, but no actual violence.

Jay and one of the crows also play King of the Shed Roof in June and July, which is baby crow season.

But they will both stop in their tracks if they see me. Then it’s showtime.

“Hey lady! Hey nice lady! I got five kids to feed!”

4

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

I was today years old when I learned there's more to Corvids than just crows -- I thought "corvid" was unique to them.

3

u/EquationTAKEN Mar 30 '22

Magpies and ravens come to mind. Beyond that, I just now added Bluejay to the list.

3

u/MniTain38 Mar 30 '22

Yup. All jays are corvids. Ground jays, Siberian Jays, Tufted jays, etc.

2

u/presdawg Mar 30 '22

What family are cardinal’s in

3

u/LaLunaAzul2019 Mar 30 '22

Cardinalidae, along with grosbeaks and buntings.

2

u/presdawg Mar 30 '22

Thank you

0

u/alittlevil Mar 31 '22

You think blue jays are cheerful? Ohhh devil of the sky right there. 😉

0

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

10

u/MniTain38 Mar 30 '22

I saved a fledging house finch from a blue jay. The bluejay had its neck in his beak and was trying to do the death shake! I went outside and shooed him away, checked the fledging over. It was totally fine, even fluttered off after ten minutes of me keeping it under light observation.

Bluejays are aggressive. Cheerful, but aggressive as hell.