Blue Jays Impersonating Hawks

Dall-E-3

Yesterday during a walk at school I heard a hawk in the pine tree by the east entrance.  All I could see in the tree was a blue jay.  Resource office Keller was there, too, insisting it was a hawk.  He Googled and found that Jays can mimic hawks.

From Cornell Labs - Blue Jay Sounds

Songs

The Blue Jay vocalization most often considered a song is the “whisper song,” a soft, quiet conglomeration of clicks, chucks, whirrs, whines, liquid notes, and elements of other calls; a singing bout may last longer than 2 minutes.

Calls

Blue Jays make a large variety of calls. The most often heard is a loud jeer, Also makes clear whistled notes and gurgling sounds. Blue Jays frequently mimic hawks, especially Red-shouldered Hawks.

But why?  Here's Birdwatchingdaily.com

Blue Jays have an impressive vocal repertoire that includes not only many sounds beyond their raucous jay! jay! calls but also other familiar oddball noises that resemble gurgles, rattles, and squeaky gates. Like other members of the corvid family, jays are pretty good mimics; they commonly impersonate Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks. I’ve also heard jays do credible Cooper’s Hawk and Broad-winged Hawk calls, and I’ve read reports of them imitating American Kestrel and Osprey.

Several theories attempt to explain the behavior, two of which are most accepted and logical. The first says that jays are trying to warn other birds that a hawk is or was present. The second suggests that jays want to dupe other birds into thinking that a hawk is nearby, perhaps to gain access to a feeder. While on woodland walks, however, I have heard solitary jays impersonating hawks when apparently I was the only audience.

Since jays often produce the calls when they’re excited, I may have unknowingly been near a nest (and perhaps appeared to the jay to be susceptible of being scared by a hawk). A more mundane explanation is that jays just mimic sounds they hear, and hawk calls are similar enough to jays’ other standard sounds that they are an easy addition to their vocal array.