Seeing Our World from a Different Perspective: The Emotional Life of Blue Jays

Sometimes, we forget to see the world from a different perspective. We assume that everybody sees and thinks about things the same way we do. We form opinions and get very emotional about them. However, just because our opinions are important to ourselves doesn't mean that they are more important than those of others. I realized this truth in a dramatic moment as I was resting in my parent's backyard on a fine summer afternoon in my teenage years.

Without warning, a pair of blue wings swooped down from above and immediately, a beak pecked me in the head. Before I knew what had happened, the bird responsible for this had flown away.

"How odd!" I thought. Then, a couple of minutes later, the same thing happened again. At this point, I became alarmed, and I retreated into the house.

I told my mother and father what had happened, and they went outside so that we could see if the bird was still out there. Then, as we were looking up at the trees, the blue jay swooped down again and pecked my dad in the head.

I have since learned that this type of bird, a Blue Jay, is a territorial bird. Consequently, if its territory is invaded by another creature - whether purposely or not - the Blue Jay will usually try to defend it.

Since we had never faced this sort of problem before, we didn't know what to do.

I suggested that maybe we could use my old BB gun, to try to scare it off. Uneasily, my dad gave me his permission to go and get the gun.

I brought it back to him, and he accepted it from me, to aim at the bird up in the trees. The bird was agitated at that moment, and was fluttering around from tree to tree because it wasn't happy that we were trespassing on its territory. As we looked closer, we realized that there were actually two blue jays in the trees.

My dad shot a BB up near one of them, hoping to scare it away. That didn't work. The bird fluttered anxiously from one tree to the next. My dad shot again. His strategy still didn't work. The bird was not fazed.