Tweeters,

Teresa Michelsen asked about the preponderance of Scrub Jays at Sauvies
Island relative to the abundance of Steller's Jay elsewhere. Her 'else-
wheres' must have been in the Coast Range or Cascades, as the Scrub Jay
is by far the dominant jay species in the Willamette Valley and other
interior valleys in Oregon.

My father grew up on the family farm about 10 miles south of Salem,
Oreg. He remembers Steller's Jay as the common jay throughout the 30s,
and the Scrub Jay ("California Jay") as pretty rarely seen. There was
still quite a bit of Douglas fir and true fir timber on the local buttes,
but the "grub" oaks stands in the mid-Willamette Valley were approaching
50 years of age. The Steller's Jay nested some in the riparian
cottonwoods along the Willamette and Santiam Rivers, but also in the
timber on the buttes and came down to the valley floor, sez he. Much of
this timber was harvested from the buttes and foothills during the 30s
and early 40s.

I read in Willard Ayres Eliot's "Birds of the Pacific Coast" (1923) that the
California Jay distribution is: "Pacific Coast region from the Columbia
River south to Lower California , and east to, and including, the Sierra
Nevada and Cascades. Rare in the northern parts of its range. A few
seen in the Willamette Valley north to Salem, and rarely to the vicinity
of Portland."

As the Scrub Jay is the common Jay in the Willamette Valley, along the
Washington side of the Columbia, and - indeed - is common in some Olympia
neighborhoods, it is apparent that their distribution has changed
radically in the past 70 years.

I don't know how much of it is 'competition' and how much is habitat-
related. Our Pacific Northwest has had its habitats altered very
significantly - even in our short lifetimes, let alone since white
settlement. It stands to reason that the bird populations will respond
to those changes.

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, WA
anderjda at dfw.wa.gov


On Mon, 2 Oct 1995, Michelsen, Teresa wrote:

> On our recent vacation to Oregon, Steller's Jays were indeed everywhere (and
> noisily so), with one major exception being Sauvie Island. On Sauvie Island,
> we spent nearly an entire day birding and saw only a single Steller's Jays.
> The jays that seemed to be all over the place around houses, etc, were
> Scrub Jays. This conformed to the F&W brochure, which listed Steller's Jays
> as uncommon and Scrub Jays as common. This seemed especially weird to me
> because the scrub jays are at the northern end of their range, so you
> wouldn't expect them to be outcompeting Steller's, especially since we saw
> far more (almost exclusively) Steller's in the rest of Oregon. Anyone know
> what's going on there?

> Teresa Michelsen
> temi461 at ecy.wa.gov