Imprinting

Here is one of our siblings (we think) from the Stellar's jay family that visits everyday. One, which we think is a female, is extremely assertive. She knows when we're in the kitchen and she flies right down. If Anne's a little slow, she'll peck at the glass in the door to get her attention. Both are very tame and have taken peanuts from her hand much to the delight of grandkids.
I think that the birds see her a a mama jay since they come so early in the morning and always see her in her blue housecoat. Reminds me of the story of Father Goose. I'm sure these jays would follow her anywhere, too, as long as the peanuts lasted.

While we love the visits and don't mind bankrupting ourselves to keep them in peanuts, we do mind the squirrels who glean from many of the birds' feeding forays. Their following of the jays is the most annoying because they dig everywhere trying to find what the jays bury. Every plant container on the deck has been ravaged this year by our resident black squirrel (1) or the gray squirrel (1). It's as though they've staked out this property as their hunting ground. The finches leave them a lot of sunflower seeds, too. But this scavenging is a helpful cleanup from the squirrels. Everybody's gotta live, I guess.