Expert: Roger Lederer - 2/24/2005

Question
I live in a small town on the North Gulf Coast of Alaska. We have an abundance of Stellar Jays in the area. I like to feed the wild birds in the area, and in doing so I have found that these Jay's are particularly fond of unsalted peanuts in the shell. You might say they go "nuts" for them. My question is: how do these birds know that a peanut "in the shell" is food? They are not migrating birds and obiviously peanuts are not native to Alaska. Even young Jays just fledged will show up at my doorstep looking for a  peanut. They will actually pass up other food to get to the peanuts. I could understand it if the peanut was shelled, but I just don't know how they know that there is food inside that shell.

Answer
What one bird learns is often passed on through the local population. So apparently one or two Stellar's Jays learned that shelled peanuts are good to eat (maybe a shell was broken open) and the other jays learned from that bird. There is a classic case in England of years ago when birds called Tits learned that they could drink the cream off the top of a milk bottle delivered to the doorstep by poking through the the cap. Pretty soon the whole population was doing it - until the milk company put different caps on.
For more information on wild birds, see www.ornithology.com
Roger Lederer