People can learn about crows and blue jays at the Missouri Department of Conservation virtual program “Corvids: Crows and Jays.” This free online program will be from 2 to 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16.

This program is for all ages. People can register at mdc-event-web. s3licensing.com.

During the program, MDC Naturalist Sam Grove will explain these birds’ interesting and beneficial characteristics.

“While it’s true crows have a long reputation of being a crop pest to farmers, it’s equally true that, in the course of a year, a crow family will consume approximately 40,000 grubs, caterpillars, army worms and other insects that can be troublesome for agricultural crops. Multiply that number to what would be consumed by a murder of crows and that’s a lot of free pest control that these birds provide to farmers,” states an event release from the conservation department.

Crows are also known to be intelligent birds. Biologists have recorded several instances where crows use items in a toollike fashion to accomplish tasks.

Blue jays may be best known for their chattering, but a lesser known but valuable trait they have is their caching of acorns in the ground to retrieve later for food.

“In one study, 50 blue jays were observed caching 150,000 acorns over a period of 28 days. Not all of these acorns are retrieved by blue jays and these unretrieved acorns often result in newly planted oak trees. This symbiotic relationship between blue jay and oaks has developed to the point that 11 species of oak trees in North America are heavily dependent on blue jays to disperse their acorns,” reports the conservation department.