Blue Jays are beautiful birds, but their aggressive behavior often scares away more mild-mannered birds.
If you find that Blue Jays are becoming a nuisance, especially to your hummingbirds and other songbirds, here’s how to get rid of Blue Jays once and for all (hopefully).
What Brings Blue Jays to Your Yard?
Blue Jays are very aggressive wild birds when it comes to food.
While they eat anything from acorns, bugs, and carrion, they love those backyard birdfeeders.
If you have songbird feeders, birdbaths, and suet feeders in your backyard, be prepared for Blue Jays.
While they may be pretty, these aggressive birds often scare away the smaller birds like chickadees, hummingbirds, and finches.
What Is the Best Way to Scare Away Blue Jays?
The best way to scare away Blue Jays is to use garden decoys like fake owls or cats, reflective mirrors, or noisy accessories like wind chimes.
Another less aggressive way to deter Blue Jays from taking over your birdfeeder is to provide alternative food sources. Opting for alternative feeding solutions such as using smaller bird feeders and birdseed designed for chickadees will help keep Blue Jays at a distance.
Below we discuss the different methods that birdwatchers use to manage their Blue Jay backyard visitors.
Using Predators Like Fake Owls or Cats
How do you get rid of a bully bird?
Employ a bigger bully.
Blue Jays are clever, but they can’t tell the difference between a real owl and a fake owl.
Placing a few owl statues around your feeders sends a message to stay away.
You can even place a few rubber snakes around your feeders.
In some cases, it works.
In other cases, you have a lovely owl statue and plenty of Blue Jays in your backyard.
Noisy Accessories Like Wind Chimes or Automatic Music
If you feel that placing fake predators in your yard is a little dirty, there are more pacifist-friendly options to try.
Wind chimes are a great way to send a message that there is unusual activity around the bird feeders to keep Blue Jays away.
Not only do they potentially keep Blue Jays away, but they also sound lovely on a warm summer day.
You can also blast music to keep Blue Jay away.
This option works well if you live in a secluded area.
However, if you live in a residential area, your neighbors might not be the biggest fan of this method.
For the music method, try and hook up a speaker to work on a timer at certain times of the day to scare off Blue Jays.
Alternative Feeding Options
You can try and lure Blue Jays away from your birdfeeders by offering them better alternatives to food sources.
Blue Jays have a favorite food they will flock to first over anything else: peanuts!
If you make a separate space for peanuts, the Blue Jays will flock to the peanuts and leave your feeders for smaller birds alone.
Keep in mind; however, that Blue Jays aren’t the only backyard critters that love peanuts.
Be sure to place your peanuts on a tray feeder far out of the reach of your backyard squirrels.
Because Blue Jays are so large, they have difficulty eating at tube feeders.
If you place a tray feeder or platform feeder away from your tube feeder, the Blue Jay will go to the food source that is easier for them to perch.
If you only want to attract finches and smaller birds, opt for a safflower feeder- the Blue Jays are not interested in safflower and use smaller bird feeders and birdseed designed for chickadees and bluebirds.
Reflective Mirrors
Visual deterrents are a great cost-effective way to keep Blue Jays out of your backyard.
They’re very affordable, super easy to install and work almost immediately.
The downside to reflective mirrors?
They keep all birds away.
This method only works if you want to drive away all of the birds in your yard, not just the Blue Jays.
Summary on Keeping Blue Jays Away
As they say- you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Keeping these bully birds away from your feeds works better if you take a defensive approach rather than taking the offense.
Things like reflective mirrors, wind chimes, music, and fake owls may work, but they will also scare away sparrows, woodpeckers, starlings, nuthatches, and other types of birds.
The best way to keep Blue Jays away from your friendly songbird feeders is to lure them away with something better.
Investing in a tray feeder and plenty of peanuts is a great way to keep Blue Jays from terrorizing the other birds in your yard.
If you don’t have peanuts, use things like sunflower seeds, suet feeders with mealworms are all great solutions.