0 Jays

[Lina Drury]

A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian magpie seems more closely related to the Eurasian jay than to the East Asian blue and green magpies, whereas the blue jay is not closely related to either. The Eurasian jay distributes oak acorns, contributing to the growth of oak woodlands over time.

Jays are not a monophyletic group. Anatomical and molecular evidence indicates they can be divided into a New World and an Old World lineage (the latter including the ground jays and the piapiac), while the grey jays of the genus Perisoreus form a group of their own.[1] The black magpies, formerly believed to be related to jays, are classified as treepies.

The term jaywalking was coined in the first decade of the 1900s to label persons crossing a busy street carelessly and becoming a traffic hazard.[4] The term began to imply recklessness or impertinent behavior as the convention became established.[5]

In January 2014, Canadian author Robert Joseph Greene embarked on a lobbying campaign among ornithologists in Europe and North America to get Merriam-Websters Dictionary to have a "Jabber of Jays" as an official term under bird groups.[6][7]

Highly social, the Pinyon jay epitomizes the dynamics of flock behavior such as colonial nesting, communal feeding of young and non-territoriality. Although Pinyon jays are nomadic and unpredictable, each flock is a tight-knit, integrated unit occupying a home range that does not overlap with other flocks. Flocks may wander widely outside their home range if sufficient food is not available.

The Pinyon jay is a permanent resident in juniper and ponderosa pine woodlands of central Oregon. Oregon's known breeding population is confined to the Metolius River drainage eastward along the south Ochoco Mountains, south through Bend and east of Newberry Crater to Silver Lake basin eastward to the Lost Forest in Lake County.

On his historic expedition with Meriwether Lewis, Captain William Clark, the bird's namesake, first mistook this species for a woodpecker undoubtedly because of its long, sharp beak. However, this most specialized member of the North American Crow family uses this apparatus to pry loose its favored seeds from unrelenting cones of several pines with which the nutcracker has a symbiotic relationship. The whitebark pine, in particular, is totally reliant on Clark's nutcrackers for seed dispersal and germination.

In Oregon the Clark's nutcracker is a resident along the crest of the Cascades, usually above 4,000 feet, lower on the east slope, from the Columbia River south to the California border, west into the Siskiyous, and east to the Warner Mountains, northeast throughout the Blue and Wallowa mountains. It is very common at Crater Lake.

This is one of the most audacious of Oregon's resident avifauna both in appearance and behavior. Its black coat and streaming tail dappled in blue-green iridescence contrasts starkly with its flashing white wing feathers during flight.

Common and conspicuous east of the Cascades, the magpie prefers open areas stippled with dense thickets or trees. They are highly social, often gathering in large flocks. Historically despised and persecuted by hunters, farmers, and ranchers, this trickster has flourished in the tradition of the coyote.

So familiar is the American crow that it has been said if a person knows only three species of birds, one of them will be the crow. Recognized by its coal-black plumage, fan-shaped tail, and nasal caw call, it is found throughout most of North America, and its seemingly mischievous character has been immortalized in folk tales and fables.

These shrewd birds possess a superior intelligence and an ability to learn and make decisions. They are also sociable, joining together in large roosts, especially in fall and winter. Able to thrive in a wide variety of environments, crows are expanding into urban areas and habitats created by farming, forestry, and other human alterations.

In Oregon, the American crow is a very common resident west of the Cascades in interior valleys, urban areas, and along the coast and is a fairly common resident throughout the Coast Range lowlands and in the west cascade foothills. It is abundant in the south Willamette Valley, with records distributed evenly throughout the year.

Ravens are clever, innovative, and entertaining. They quickly exploit human-created opportunities for food and shelter. Their spectacular aerial acrobatics conducted under windy or thermal conditions appear to be an act of fun.

The Common raven's plumage is entirely shiny black like the American crow, but the ravens appear 25 percent larger, have a wedge-shaped tail and have deeper croaks and other calls than the American crow.

Gray jays are common visitors at mountainous campsites and parks and are commonly known as "camp robbers" for their habit of taking food from humans. Gray jays in the Blue Mountains have the top of their heads white, while birds in the Cascades and Coast ranges have white restricted to the forehead. Coast Range birds are decidedly browner vs grayish overall.

The Steller's jay is unmistakable with its charcoal and blue plumage, distinctive crest, and raucous call announcing its presence. Steller's jays forage on the ground and in trees and bushes. Omnivorous, they eat a variety of animal and plant food. This jay nests in trees or shrubs and often places the nest near the trunk and within 10-16 feet from the ground.

In Oregon, it is a common resident in mesic and dry conifer and mixed conifer-hardwood forests from valley floors to near timberline. It is found in forests of the Coast and Cascade ranges during breeding season.

One of the characteristic birds of woodlands and city streets is this loud, colorful jay. Its bright blue-and-white-plumage and shrill calls are quite distinctive. It is closely related to the Steller's jay and hybrid individuals have been noted where their ranges overlap. It is an opportunistic forager of small animals and invertebrates, but is predominantly a vegetarian.

It is a rare to regular visitor to eastern and western Oregon from late September to late April. The Blue jay prefers open mixed forests or deciduous groves and is often found in orchards and parks and along wooded city streets.

The name of the Western scrub-jay derives from its preference for "scrub" habitat, consisting chiefly of shrubs or brush intermixed with sparse trees. It calls attention to itself with its raspy metallic shriek.

Its harsh voice and fussy, boisterous behavior might lead some to consider the scrub-jay a nuisance, but this bird also possesses abundant character and is considered to be uncommonly smart and adaptable.

In May or June the female lays three to six eggs, pale olive or buff, spotted with brown or gray. Both sexes incubate. Blue jays are silent and furtive around the nest. Pairs can nest very close to a house without making many sounds or otherwise attracting attention to themselves. Many jay nests go undetected in neighborhoods. Blue jays strongly defend their nest against intruders, calling loudly and diving at and mobbing hawks, owls, crows, squirrels, cats, and ground predators. Yet they will allow other jays to land quite near the nest. In this way, blue jays do not defend classic exclusive nesting territories but rather a home range where they forage near the nest and tolerate some jays nearby. Pairs of jays nesting nearby often assist each other in defending against predators. The eggs hatch after 17 to 18 days. Both parents feed the young, bringing them insects, other invertebrates, and carrion. Adult blue jays sometimes raid the nests of smaller birds, including vireos, warblers, and sparrows, eating eggs and nestlings. Biologists believe that forest fragmentation is giving jays and other nest predators greater access to the nests of woodland birds. Although jays have the reputation of nest-robbers, there is a lack of evidence that this is a large part of their diet or that they are a significant contributor to declines of songbirds. Like other songbirds, jays have their own nest predators and need to defend their nests from chipmunks, squirrels, grackles, crows, hawks, owls, and snakes. Jays often drive off nest predators, inadvertently assisting the nest defense of other birds nearby.

Yes, small birds may scatter to the four winds when a flamboyant blue jay with its erect crest, broad wings, and fanned tail swoops in, shouting Jay! Jay! Jay! They quickly get over it. With a big snowstorm looming early last spring, a host of anxious jays, cardinals, juncos, downy woodpeckers, tree sparrows, white-throated sparrows, and newly arrived song sparrows foraged in total harmony on seeds tossed or spilled beneath my hanging feeders.

Indeed, as the story is told, a distinguished English bird man once visiting America was eager to see a living blue jay instead of a museum skin. He considered it to be the finest bird in the world and was surprised to find that it was quite ordinary.

Simply put, blue jays airlifted the oaks, beeches, and chestnuts to new territories when the ice melted. Nut-squirreling mammals, experts point out, were of little help, since they usually hoard food close to the parent tree.

Arriving at its cache site, the blue jays usually regurgitated their acorn haul in a pile, then dropped the nuts one at a time within a few yards of each other, covering them with leaf litter. Darley-Hill reported that 91 percent of the caching sites in the Blacksburg study were on suburban tracts or bare soil where colonies of pin oak seedlings were already thriving. One cached acorn, she added, would never germinate. The jay stuffed it in ivy covering a brick wall.

The Florida scrub-jay is a blue and gray bird about the size of a blue jay. Scrub-jays have blue wings, head, and tail, and gray back and underparts, and a whitish forehead and neck. Unlike blue jays, this species does not have black markings or a crest.

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