Western Scrub-Jays

Hi all! My name is Cora, and I am studying Western Scrub-Jays, which are a type of blue jay. These animals seem to always be around in my yard, and when I was little, I called them "clouses" and I used to feed them crackers. I've been observing these birds in two different places: my backyard and my school garden. In my yard, we have a lot of oak trees and other shrubs that the birds like to perch in, and there is a pair of Scrub-Jays that frequents my yard (they're very territorial, so I never see more than two at once). The school garden is such a nice place to go to do work, and sometimes I can find some of my birds up there, so I'll go up there after school, during lunch, or during free blocks sometimes and observe birds there. One of the coolest things that I've seen these birds do is store food for later in the winter. I watched one hop around with an acorn in its beak, wedge the acorn into the ground, then hammer the acorn further in with its beak. Then, it covered up the spot with a few pieces of bark. Another one wedged the acorn into the ground, looked around and saw that another bird was watching, and dug it up and buried it elsewhere. These birds apparently can remember hundreds of locations where they've cached food for the winter! As for me, I love to run on the trails around school and around my house, and I'm on the cross country team.