Blue Jays vote with their wings

Mike Bottini writes from The Springs that the acorn crop there is poor and wants to know if it's any better here. Apparently the Blue Jays have voted with their wings. They are all over the place and, when I put up the binocs to look at one, it invariably has an acorn in its beak. They came in all in a bunch a week ago or so -- maybe from The Springs. What are they doing with these acorns? Gulping them down or stashing them somewhere in anticipation of a hard winter? Gigi Spates suggests that the decapitated Muskrat that I found the other day was the work of a Great Horned Owl. Apparently brains are their favorite snack. Great Horned Owls -- two them, a male and a female -- have been hanging out in our area this year. Usually they nest in the Pine Barrens but this is their courtship season and a local nesting by the end of fall or early winter is not an impossibility. I would suggest keeping your unleashed pets indoors (especially cats!) As many of the readers of this blog know, there is a Brown Booby at Lake Montauk and it often perches on the mast of a boat (or boats) and is reportedly not difficult to find, observe and photograph. Brown Booby is a tropical relative of the Gannet which is usually found plying tropical waters. Its appearance here is, no doubt, connected with the recent round of hurricanes in tropical waters. I hope to get out to Montauk to see it myself before it takes off for home. Eric Salzman