Nature News: Blue jays are an oak's best friend Acorn-hoarding by blue jays is important to the spread of oak forests throughout the northeast photo by Rodney Campbell When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing about blue jays, she told me that for the longest time she had a negative opinion of them. She equated blue jays with pigeons and starlings - pesky, noisy, messy eaters, bullies at bird feeders. However, after moving away from New England, she found she missed them - their uncommon good looks, their role as sentinels of the forest and the birdfeeder, their inquisitive natures. Blue jays are corvids, close cousins of the crows, ravens and magpies. Like crows, they are known for their intelligence and while they've never been observed using tools in the wild, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, captive blue jays have used newspaper strips to rake food pellets into cages. I've been watching jays come to my feeder