Blue Jay Observation: Hide & Seek

For a while now I've been putting out raw peanuts or peanuts still in their shell.  The biggest fans of this has been the Blue Jays.  I've been wanting to get some pictures of one of them cracking the shells and reaping the goods, but it's usually to far up in the tree or they fly away. 

So the other day I was watching a Blue Jay from the back door and noticed it had one of the smaller peanuts shells intact in its mouth.  I figured that I was going to see it crack it open and enjoy the peanuts.  But instead, I saw it place the small peanut shell against the flowerbed edging and then begin to collect a few things around it to cover it up. 

In the top picture you can see the mound of items covering the small peanut shell.  I "dissected" the hiding place and the Blue Jay had used a dried, dead leaf and two various pieces of old mulch chips.  You can see the peanut shell in the bottom photo stuck down in the grass.

Being a relatively new observer and fan of birds, this was new to me.  Since, I've read that they quite often do this because they are known to not want to share food, so it makes sense that they would want to hide food.  The funny thing is that most of the time, they don't remember that they hide an item, much less where.  I've left the little hiding pile for a couple of days now.  It will be interesting to see if the Blue Jay ever comes back.