Scrub Jay
Aphelocoma coerulesceens; Florida scrub. Photo courtesy of Gerald & Buff Corsi © California Academy of Sciences.
JB: This is Earth and Sky. The Florida scrub jay is the only species of bird that lives nowhere but Florida.
DB: John Fitzpatrick is Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He was a student in 1972, when he first came to the Archbold Biological Station in the open sandy scrub region of central Florida. The scrub jay research project was just beginning then . . .
JB: And it’s still going on today. Researchers have found that scrub jays are social, cooperative birds. The birds help each other raise offspring and watch for danger. John Fitzpatrick told us he marvels at the visual and spatial memory of a scrub jay. In late summer, the jays pluck acorns from shrubby oaks and bury them in the sand, one at a time. Each jay has a 30-acre territory and buries a lot of acorns – about eight thousand acorns each. In the winter months, the jays dig up the acorns and eat them. They seem to recall where they buried each acorn, better than we humans could. Here’s Dr. Fitzpatrick.
John Fitzpatrick: The amusing thing is that graduate students have been put to the same task in aviaries in the western US and no student has ever even come close to matching a jay at its ability to remember where they put things
DB: But the scrub jay is losing its habitat. More about that tomorrow. Our thanks today to the Bureau of Land Management and to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
The following individual was interviewed for today’s show. Our thanks to:
John Fitzpatrick
Director of Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
Cornell University
Relevant web sites:
Author’s Notes:
Only three percent of the Florida scrub jay’s original habitat remains.
27.31: With scientific understanding of what the systems need, and with a lot of people playing different roles, from the pure sciences… right down to the very practical real estate issues … lots of people can put together and actually make a system move towards permanent protection.
32.57: In my view, the fundamental argument is: do you want to live side by side with some of the most amazing creatures that have ever evolved in the Earth? Or do you want to just get rid of them? …we do have after all, some moral responsibility not to just destroy them just because it was convenient for us
30.56: The pure moral reason is best understood by walking out in the middle of a Florida scrub and having pointed out to you, in all its elfin splendor, the hundreds and hundreds of species, and the billion years of evolutionary history that each one of those things represents, and how they now interact, and realizing that it far more complex and beautiful than the Mona Lisa. We want to save the Mona Lisa and all the other paintings in the Louvre because of what they tell us about our own past and about human nature. By the same token, we ought to want to save all the beautiful intricate details of biological live that we’re living side by side with, because of what they tell us and what we haven’t even begun to learn from them yet. So we have as much a moral responsibility as anything … – and an opportunity – to save these things … all we need to do is decide that we want to do that.
6.36: The one thing we know is that they do it better than humans can. These birds have been measure in laboratory settings and with experimental procedures that show that they actually remember by local landmarks — pretty much the way you and I would…. They’ll get down on the ground, they’ll look around a bit, and they’ll dig down in the sand and pull up an acorn. So, they’ve known that two and a half centimeters this way and just a hair to the side of the base of the stem, I put an acorn several months ago. So they have an extremely good visual memory, special memory
28.22: So there is going to be a day … that one can actually put a flag down and say, ‘Here is a system where we actually understood it in time to save it. We’re not there yet, but it’s actually much closer than it’s ever been.
28.45: We won’t save it all and as I like to point out in the case of the scrub in Florida: the pizza is gone. We’re talking right now about saving enough of the crumbs on the plate so that the original entity can still be enjoyed and preserved.
Additional Teacher Resources
U.S. Geological Survey, South Florida Information Access (SOFIA); SOFIA Kid’s Page: Critters: Florida Scrub Jay
This site is a great resource for younger students learning about the endangered Florida scrub jay. It offers a brief natural history, the cause and effect of the species endangered status, a Florida scrub jay coloring page, and various photo images of the scrub jay in its natural habitat.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, North Florida Field Office: Florida Scrub-Jay
This page provides a brief natural history of the Florida scrub jay as well as various internal links to more information on a number of subjects concerning the species.
Eco-Florida Magazine: Florida Scrub Jay: Losing Ground
This site discusses how the Florida scrub jay has been declared threatened due to habitat loss. The Florida jay is a unique bird found no where else in the world and unfortunately, that is what is about its downfall.
