Blue Jays and Robins

Spring is near. This morning, there was a congregation of robins singing in the woods beyond my studio apartment. I watched as they flew excitedly from one tree to another chasing each other or just hopping around from branch to branch. There were atleast a 100 orange breasted birds and also a blue jay. I was left wondering, what was a blue jay doing with these robins? Don't birds of a feather flock together? So I looked for clues online and I now have a story of my own.

This article by Ann Hingas speaks about blue jays being raiders of other birds' nests. They are known to especially like the nests of robins and take them up for nesting. So my theory is that a blue jay left her egg in a robin's nest. And the robin later returned to the nest, hatched the egg, and continued to look after the blue jay as her own, possibly, along with her own baby robins. Now the blue jay lives as a robin and migrates along with this flock, stopping once in while at some woods in Baltimore.

Well, I know its a long shot. You could have many reasons to disapprove of my theory. Quite a silly discussion but I learned something about blue jays today and won't forget it because of this story. And wouldn't it be awesome, if the robins did not judge the blue jay for having a different color?