They bury acorns and come back to get them later, like squirrels. Older siblings help with raising the younger ones. And they are only found in Florida.
The Florida scrub jay is a federally designated threatened species, requiring large tracts of land for its range that are becoming more and more rare due to encroaching development, according to Manatee County Education and Volunteer Division Manager Aedan Stockdale.
But the birds seem to like Duette Preserve, east of Parrish.
Once a year, county staff counts the birds at Duette, photographs them and the identification bands on their legs and reports their findings to Audubon’s Jay Watch program.
When restoration began at Duette more than 20 years ago, scrub jays were predicted to become extinct in the preserve due to a lack of pristine habitat, he said. But working with research and consulting groups to study them in depth, improving their habitat with plantings and prescribed burns and relocating birds to the site from elsewhere has resulted in about 26 families of scrub jays, with four to five members each.
In relocations, the birds are trapped and moved to more suitable habitat, which has the beneficial side effect of increasing genetic diversity in the species and improving the population’s health, he said. Some are moved from Mosaic properties that were approved to be cleared for mining on condition of relocating scrub jays.
Families nest together, in small scrub oaks, with older siblings helping defend the family’s territory and acting as lookouts, making alarm calls if they see a predator like a hawk or snake.
The Jay Watch group spotted a family on June 29 at 7:25 a.m., and an adult and a juvenile on June 27.
“It’s a thrill,” Manatee County Natural Resources Volunteer Coordinator Shelby Reece said. “We typically gather just before 7 a.m. and head out in two groups to the designated spots. Each group has a speaker and an MP3 player. Everyone in the group has binoculars and we take a minute or so to scan for predator birds before playing the scrub jay calls so we don’t accidentally bring the jays into a dangerous spot. We play the call for one minute then look out for two minutes to see if any fly in. We do this process three times for each location. When jays appear, the group works together to identify and document the bands if they have them.”
State wildlife contractors and Audubon band the birds, Stockdale said, adding that some birds get radio trackers.
There are also scrub jays at the nearby county Moody Branch Preserve, also east of Parrish, and other land owned by the state and the Southwest Florida Water Management District in the county.
Oscar Sherer State Park in Sarasota once had one of the state’s largest populations, but development encroaching on the park has caused a decline in numbers, he said.
The statewide outlook for the species is “rough,” Stockdale said, with the birds facing developmental pressure on upland property and less general support for preserving large tracts of conservation land.
As more land is converted to lawns that require pesticides, the species will continue to decline, he said.
Cindy Lane is a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Beacons. She can be reached at clane@tbnweekly.com.