The Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) is the forest's brightest crow relative, a pinkish-brown corvid with a brilliant blue-black-and-white barred wing patch that flashes clearly in flight. The body is rounded and stocky, the head pale beige with a black moustachial streak and a crest it raises when alarmed, the wings black with that striking blue panel, and the white rump stands out sharply against the black tail against a stout black bill. Sexes look alike, and juveniles resemble adults but with duller colouring.
Its most familiar sound is a harsh, screeching "skraaa-skraaa" alarm call that carries far and warns of predators, but Jays are also accomplished mimics, imitating buzzards, Tawny Owls, cats and other birds, likely to scare off rivals; a quieter, gurgling song is heard only rarely, mostly close up during the breeding season. Found throughout Sweden from Skåne to northern Norrland except the treeless mountains, with a stable resident population estimated at 200,000–400,000 pairs, it favours deciduous and mixed woodland, especially oak stands, as well as woodland edges and increasingly parks with old trees. It builds a platform nest of twigs in a tree or spruce, laying 4–6 eggs incubated for 16–17 days, with young fledging after 19–23 days. The Jay is famous for its role in forest regeneration: each autumn a single pair caches 4,000–5,000 acorns in the ground within a territory of just 2–5 hectares, relocating roughly three-quarters of them by spatial memory — the rest germinate, making the Jay one of the forest's most important oak planters. Its diet also includes nuts, berries, insects, spiders, frogs, and the eggs and young of other birds.
Read about this species in Swedish →