California Scrub-Jay

California Scrub-jays are the West Coast, lower-altitude version of the widespread jay tribe, which itself is part of the corvid family, the global group that includes crows, magpies, and similar large-billed, intelligent, opportunistic birds.  Our scrub-jays are oak woodland specialists.

Like most jays in North America, the California Scrub-jay wears a lot of blue–although, following the geography of European colonization, only the Eastern bird wears the name “Blue Jay.”  Our scrub-jay has a rounded head, not crested, and a blue topside with a partial necklace extending into pale gray underparts; it’s a well-dressed, thoroughly attractive bird.  The jays are imposing–large, bold, and inquisitive.  They often patrol their neighborhoods in brash family gangs.

Their bills are particularly hefty, allowing the versatility to acquire and eat a range of foods–fruits, nuts, and a variety of meats.  Those formidable bills empower a proprietary demeanor, and seem to intimidate smaller birds, who scatter from feeders when the scrub-jays arrive and watch helplessly when the larger birds dine on their eggs or nestlings.  The unstated threat that the scrub-jay’s powerful bill poses seems to reprise the Pancho and Lefty lyric: He wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel.  They are wild animals, after all, and live by a brutal code.

Some steal the acorns their companions have hidden for winter consumption.  That behavior in turn seems to affect their social attitude.  Scrub-jay thieves, like those among their cousin crows and other species, seem suspicious; they wait to hide their own acorns until they are alone and unobserved.

With their mates the scrub-jays appear reliable.  Nearly 90% of them remain paired from one year to the next.  Both adults help build their nest, and they often feed each other as well as their young.

Come winter they typically gang up and hold their territories, often with loud sorties of spread-winged flight through the neighborhood understory.  Their flocking, their size and robust demeanor, their power and assertiveness, all seem to keep the scrub-jays going.  Until the 1930’s California fruit and nut growers, thinking it would protect their crops, organized large-scale shoots of these birds.  Still, the scrub-jays have persisted, and maintain a stable population.