And some of the smartest of course, like most corvidae. There’s a pair here who love making Red-tailed Hawk noises to make other animals nervous. I’ve always gotten the sense they do it for fun
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So I’m lying on our couch last week, from where I have an oblique view of the deck and feeders. A bird of some type (I later identified it as a red-breasted nuthatch) hit the door, as sometimes happens, and fell stunned to the deck. I knew it was there, but I was giving it some time to recover, which is what usually happens. I could not see it from my vantage point.
Anyway, as I’m watching, a blue jay comes to the feeders and starts the usual shrieking. Only it doesn’t stop. It hops to a table and just keeps shrieking and shrieking…and then it hops to the deck out of my sight. And then it hits me…it’s trying to scare off the bird that’s unconscious on the deck, and is getting agitated that the bird is not flying away. I believe it went and pushed the other bird (which, either before or after, had passed). Eventually the jay seemed satisfied that it wasn’t in fact a turf war.