Sparrow/Blue Jay question/help. (1 Viewer)

So about 2 days ago, I heard some frantic chirping and went outside to find a young, what I assume is your basic Sparrow, out in my yard. He's pretty decently feathered, with just some pink belly. He obviously could not fly, and there was no way he was going to survive on the ground here as we have literally hundreds of roaming cats, coons, skunks, squirrels, snakes... that come through our yard. You name it, we have it. (Colorado)
The nest he came from is unreachable, so I made him a decent place out of a large plastic storage box, and placed it high up on a stand so nothing can reach it. After examining him to see if anything was wrong, I quickly noticed he has 3 "holes" in him. Best I can describe it. Might take pictures later. Not too deep, but look perfectly circular. One on his chest, one on his side and one on a wing. Anyway, I placed him in the box and watched. The parents are still VERY attentive. They are both feeding him, and aggressively protect him. They gave me hell the first day, but seem to be adapting to me now and don't roar at me so much.
Anyway, just a bit ago, I heard all hell breaking loose. The parents going NUTS. I run outside, and a Blue Jay is attempting to get to the baby. (anticipating something like this since we have Hawks, I had given him a little hideaway his size to get into inside the box. Which he used.) The parents were dive-bombing the Blue Jay and finally managed to chase him away. I checked on him and he seemed to be no worse for wear, other than scared to wits end. From the way he was shaking, I'm assuming this wasn't his first meeting. He was never that scared with me.
Sorry if that was TL;DR. (too long didn't read)
Question is: Do Blue Jays aggressively hunt baby birds?Eat them?I'm assuming the holes in him are from this Blue Jay. The Blue Jays aren't real common around here. I see one maybe every couple weeks really. (we have a lot of birds, and I do bird-watch a bit) Hard to see it as strictly territorial.

Thanks.

Hi syzygy I see this is your first post, so may I welcome you on behalf of the Staff and Moderators.

It sounds as if you have done as much as you can to help this wee fella, well done. I had to look up Blue Jay as we don't get them here, and it appears that they will eat nestlings.

Please keep us informed of the outcome.

D

I guess I could have looked that up myself and seen that nestling part. Sorry.

But it's pretty obvious now. The Blue Jay has came back looking for the baby 3 times in the last couple hours. Kinda funny this last time, because the Sparrows brought an army of around 8 and pestered him until he left.

Great news. How is the little fella doing? Have the same thing with mocking birds protecting from jays and others.

Frank Lardino