Jacque Lowery

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April "High Desert" Birds-Of-The-Month: Western Scrub Jay, Steller's Jay & Pinyon Jay

It's Not a Blue Jay!

No matter where you live in northern Nevada, you probably have at least one of three possible jay species in your neighborhood.  And not one of them is a Blue Jay, which only occurs east of the Rocky Mountains.  All jays are members of the Corvid family, which also includes Crows, Ravens, Magpies and others.  The Corvids are studied extensively, and are proving to be the most intelligent of all bird species with the ability to reason, use tools and other amazing feats.

In most urban areas and desert suburbia, the most likely resident is the Western Scrub Jay.  He is a crestless jay with blue head, wings and tail, a gray mask and back and pale gray underneath.  His white throat has dark streaks and is bordered by a dark necklace.  Scrub Jays will eat grains, seeds, lizards, frogs, and insects as well as, rarely, eggs and young of other birds.   Western Scrub Jays have been known to cache (hide) up to 6000 pine seeds or 5000 acorns in a single autumn.  Researchers have studied the ability of Scrub Jays to remember where the seeds were located.  They are thought to use landmarks for their seed retrieval.  They also will steal food from the cache of other birds or nuts they’ve watched other jays hide. 

Anyone living in forested areas or along the river corridor is likely to see not only Scrub Jays, but also Steller’s Jays. Steller’s Jays have large heads, chunky bodies and long, full tails.  They have a prominent triangular crest that often stands nearly straight up from their head.  The coloring is fairly dark, with no white underparts like other jays.  The head is charcoal black and the body is all blue. 

Like other jays, Steller’s Jays are bold, inquisitive, intelligent and noisy.  Like Scrubs, Steller’s will eat insects, nuts, small animals, berries, nuts, eggs and nestlings.  As with other corvids, they also cache acorns and pinyon pine seeds as a winter food store.  Several species of pine trees have become partially dependent on them for the dispersal of their seeds.

Neither Western Scrub Jay nor Steller’s Jay have any blue pigment in their feathers.  Instead, each feather barb has a thin layer of cells that absorb all wavelengths of color except blue.  Only the blue wavelength is reflected and scattered, resulting in their blue appearance to our eyes.

Both species readily eat corn, suet, sunflower seeds and peanuts.  Moana Nursery carries the foods and feeders such as tube feeders, mesh peanut feeders, hopper feeders, and peanut wreaths that appeal to the jays.  Peanuts in the shell are a favorite with both.  Watch your feeder to see if you can observe them shaking peanuts to tell if the shell is full or empty.

Pinyon Jay

Besides the Western Scrub Jay and Steller’s Jay that many people are familiar with, there is a third species of jay in northern Nevada, the Pinyon Jay.  As the name implies, their habitat is the pinyon/juniper forests all over the West.  They are a dusty blue, more stout than a scrub jay with a sharp beak designed specifically to extract seeds from the cones of pinyon pines.  They travel and forage in flocks, and have been known to visit feeders in the North Valleys, west Carson, Virginia Highlands and other areas.

Pinyon Jay populations are being studied extensively in different locations; much of this research is to see how they are faring with the decline of their favorite habitat.  From an article this year in Cornell’s Living Bird Magazine: “The Pinyon Jay and pinyon pine share more than a name; their fates appear to be inextricably linked. The marriage of the Pinyon Jay to this tree has, over millennia, saved adult jays and their broods from starving during winter and early spring breeding seasons. In turn, the jays have helped disperse the seeds of pinyon pines.

Eleven species of pinyon pines are found along with juniper trees in the vast woodlands of the semi-arid West.  Pinyon pine seeds are heavy and fat, rich in oils, and packed with protein and calories. They are too heavy to be dispersed by wind, so the pinyon tree needs animals to carry its seeds away from the parent tree and plant them. That’s where Pinyon Jays come in. Some years pinyon pines produce bumper crops of seeds—so many seeds that even the greediest Pinyon Jay can’t eat them all. Because the seeds are available for only a couple of months, the jays cache seeds to eat later.”

Pinyon Jays have an expandable neck pouch that can carry over 50 seeds at a time.  A flock will congregate and gather pinyon seeds.  When enough birds have full throats, a verbal signal is given and the birds fly en masse to an open area, where they will walk shoulder to shoulder and poke the seeds into the ground much like farmers sowing crops.  This cache will be used for winter survival.  Researchers have proved that the jays can remember up to 95% of their cache locations, which leaves 5% of the cached seeds with the potential to germinate and grow new trees.

Pinyon Jays are monogamous; scientists’ efforts to get them to “cheat” on their mates in controlled experiments were unsuccessful.  In the event of death of a mate, the survivor will often seek a new mate in other flocks or will help at the nests of his parents rather than raise a brood of his own.

Cornell’s article states: “Pinyon Jays adapt well physically and socially to short-term drought and to fire, and they can live, apparently quite well, in the midst of human housing developments—as long as they have stands of trees for roosting, pinyon seeds to eat, and large open areas nearby for caching.”

Fun Facts:

• They are often chastised for their known practice of eating eggs and nestlings of other birds. But extensive research has proven this to be a very rare occurrence, with only 1% of the study population showing any evidence of this behavior.

• Many migrating Western Scrub Jays reach their wintering grounds after natural food crops, such as acorns, may have already peaked. Whether they still cache a winter food supply is unknown at this time. Birdfeeders may play an important role for some of these birds.

• Peanuts in the shell are a favorite among Western Scrub & Steller's Jays. Watch your feeder to see if you can observe them shaking peanuts to tell if the shell is full or empty.

• Western Scrub & Steller's Jays mainly select undamaged nuts to bury; research has shown that only 10% of the acorns they cache are not viable seeds.  This is a Steller's Jay below:

• Western Scrub Jays & Steller's Jays will bury seeds up to 2.5 miles from their original source, which is a record for any bird.  This behavior has greatly helped with the range expansion of many oak species.

• The rapid northward dispersal of oaks after the ice age may have resulted from the northern transport of acorns by Jays.

• Due to Jays' habit of burying acorns over a wide area, 11 species of oak trees have become dependant on them for the dispersal of their acorns.

• Due to Steller's Jay's habitat of burying pine nuts, several species of pine trees have become partially dependant on them for the dispersal of their seeds.

• The Steller's Jay is a talented mimic; its version of a Red-shoulder hawk's call can fool even the most experienced birder.

• Jays will cache seeds and nuts to retrieve later, and make repeated trips to feeders to gather food and hide it in a safe spot.

• If you have a flock of Scrub Jays foraging in your yard, look for the presence of sentinels. If guards spot something, the whole group may join in a mobbing behavior to protect themselves.

• Scrub Jays bury many more acorns than they consume, thus helping to renew many species of oak trees.

• The Western Scrub-Jay is known to feed on parasites on the body of mule deer, hopping over the body and head of the deer to get them.

• Western Scrub Jays have been known to cache up to 6,000 pine seeds or 5,000 acorns in single autumn.

• Researchers have studied the ability of Western Scrub Jays to hide (cache) and remember where the seeds were located.  They are thought to use landmarks for their seed retrieval. 

• Like all jays, Western Scrub Jays may be secretive and silent around its nest or while perching in a treetop in early morning, but are frequently noisy and conspicuous.

• Western Scrub Jays prefer scrub oak, woodlands, chaparral and suburban gardens.