On June 6, 2021, I photographed a hungry baby blue jay at Fort Smith National Historic Site in Arkansas. The chick sat out on the flat rock with its beak wide open, begging for a meal. I got my photos of the begging. Then the rain started, and I never did get a shot of the parents feeding it.
A Hungry Baby Blue Jay Up Close
Look at the photos and you will see there is no blue on this bird yet. The chick is gray and white, all down and half-grown feathers, with dark flight feathers coming in on its wings. Its legs are still pink, and its beak opens wide enough to show the red inside its mouth.
That open beak is the whole show. The chick held its wings out and begged for all it was worth, and the head-on shot shows the bright red gape that no parent bird could miss.
What Baby Blue Jays Eat
Baby blue jays eat much the same food as their parents: insects, berries, seeds, and grains. In the first few days after hatching, the male brings in most of the food. The female helps with the feeding later, and between the two of them the chicks stay fed. Once the young birds are out of the nest and past this stage, feeding changes again, and I covered that in Blue Jay Fledglings Beyond the Beg.
Blue Jay Facts Worth Knowing
The blue on an adult blue jay is not a pigment. The feathers hold melanin, which is brown, and the blue we see comes from the way the feather structure scatters light. Crush the feather and the blue is gone.
Blue jays are adaptable birds, at home in woods, parks, and yards across the eastern and central United States. Some northern birds move south for the winter, while many stay in the same area year-round. If your yard jays seem louder in the fall than in spring or summer, that fits. Blue jays are known to be noisier in the fall.
My setup that morning:
- Camera: Canon EOS R5
- Lens: Canon EF 800mm f/11
- Mode and aperture: f/11 (fixed)
- Shutter speed: 1/400 sec
- ISO: 4000 (Auto)
- Exposure compensation: +1/3 EV
- Focal length: 800 mm
The rain won that morning, and the feeding shot got away from me. I still like these two frames of the chick asking for its breakfast. Tell me in the comments about a shot the weather cost you.