It's not that the jays like the semps but they will look around to find recently disturbed soil to hoard nuts in. They will also root around for nuts they hoarded in the past. A freshly built bed for semps (or anything else planted) is like manna from heaven for jays. They are looking for soft soil that is easy to poke nuts into. Another thing to watch out for is the pulling of labels. The metal Eon type labels are ok, but they can and will pull out those plastic labels. I played this game with my jays a couple of years ago with a label in a container. This one bird would pull it out and drop it on the ground outside the container. I would put it back in and sit on my patio step waiting. I didn't even have to hide; he would come back and repeat his little activity and this happened over and over just 15 feet off my patio.
