About Blue Jays eating paint off our house - turns out another of our friends (Phoebe and Abby's breeder), who lives in our town, also said she had Blue Jays eating paint off of her house. Both of us have light colored paint on our houses.Thanks to one of the readers of our blog for, click this link about why the Blue Jays do it.
Turns out Blue Jays need lots of calcium, maybe more than most birds. So they eat paint, which has some calcium in it. Blue Jays in the northeast are especially prone to this behavior because the soils in the northeast lack calcium.
One trick to deter them from your house, is to offer them egg shells (cooked for 20 min in a 250 degrees oven to make them safe). I will explore other sources of calcium. Any ideas?
See you Monday (we don't blog on weekends).
6 comments:
Very interesting post!
I had no idea! The one year we had Blue Jays, I never saw that happen. All they did was eat peanuts by the bucketful! (lol). It was so much fun. I wish they'd come back and visit again. We had a half-dozen that arrived in the fall of 2006 and stayed all winter - never saw them again.
That is very interesting.Have a great weekend.
Blessings,Ruth
I'm thinking ground or crushed oyster shells may work. You can buy bags of it at any pet store that sells salt water aquarium supplies.
You could easily stir in powered milk as some of the additives to peanut butter/suet or lard mix. Jays seem to love that already.
Marilyn
wow!!! that is amazing! I did not know that at all! well... I am learning every day!
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