At 1:47 AM -0700 9/9/03, Rahne Kirkham wrote:
>My niece asked me this birding question and, since I don't know the answer,
>I am passing it on to you all. She lives off a greenbelt on the hill between
>Federal Way and Auburn and gets a lot of bird activity at her feeder
>including occasional sightings of raptors. All summer she has heard a
>red-tailed hawk cry over her house but when she goes out with her binos,
>there is nothing there but a Steller's Jay going, "Shack, shack, shack" like
>mad. She wants to know if Jays mimic other birds. I told her I didn't think
>so but wasn't sure. What do all you canny ornithologists etc. know about
>this?

Rahne,

Jays are notorious mimics, especially of raptor calls. I once heard a
Steller's Jay give such a convincing imitation of a Red-shouldered
Hawk that I couldn't believe it wasn't a hawk until I saw the jay fly
to another spot and call again. That said, you can learn to tell them
apart; jay's calls usually have a "thinner" quality, often wavering a
little at the end where a Red-tail's just trails off. Jays are a good
deal smaller, so their imitation isn't exact.

Someone asked me once why jays would mimic hawks, and the only answer
I could come up with was, "For fun."
--
Rob Saecker
Olympia
rsaecker at thurston.com