Tweets:

On a purely anecdotal level, after living the first 35 years of my
life in the Bay Area, my recollection is that we saw Western Scrub
Jays almost exclusively in open country and oak savannas and
generally only saw Steller's Jays in more forested areas, usually but
not always coniferous forests--the redwoods, the Sierra Nevada,
Tilden Park (largely eucalyptus forest), etc. We seldom saw the two
species together.

But what I am wondering about is why all the reports of Western
Scrub Jays in the Seattle metro area seem to come from the west side
of Lake Washington. Has anyone, spotted them on the East side--
Issaquah, Redmond, Woodinville?

I'm in Redmond and I would love to see them show up here. I miss them
from my boyhood.

Thanks,

Daniel Brown

www.danieljamesbrown.com


On Oct 20, 2008, at 10:02 AM, B & P Bell wrote:

> Hi Mike and all
>
> I remember that when I was living down in California that there was
> a fairly clear dividing line in the Sierra foothills between
> Western Scrub-Jays and Steller's Jays. As you move up into the
> foothills the oaks give way to more coniferous forest, but there is
> a zone of overlap. Most folks seemed to feel that in any
> confrontation between the two species, specifically in the overlap
> zone, that the Scrub-Jays usually came out best, but I don't
> remember any specific studies to verify that. I do know that in 20
> years down there I can't remember an instance of the Steller's
> getting the best of fracas.
>
> Brian H. Bell
> Birding & Natural History Guide
> Woodinville WA
> mail to bell asoc at isomedia dot com
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <mgd at myuw.net>
> To: "Rachel" <RachelWL at msn.com>
> Cc: "Tweeters" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 7:59 AM
> Subject: [Tweeters] Scrub-jays
>
>
>> Hi Rachel and Tweeters,
>>
>> I have a pair of Western Scrub-Jays and a pair Steller's Jays in my
>> yard/neighborhood on Beacon Hill. I'm feeding them peanuts and get
>> plenty of
>> opportunity to watch their behavior. I've noticed that the scrub-
>> jays chase
>> away the Steller's--the latter usually come in when the scrubs
>> have taken off
>> with peanuts. I've seen Steller's Jays in oaks (Seward Park,
>> Naches, Ft. Lewis) so they certainly know how to take advantage of
>> an acorn crop. My guess is that throughout their range the scrubs
>> are dominate to the Steller's and keep them in the conifers while
>> the scrubs take the oaks.
>>
>> I've also seen lots of antagonistic encounters between the scrubs
>> and the
>> Anna's. The Anna's are always after the scrubs but don't seem to
>> care about the Steller's. I'm wondering if that's because of the
>> long shared evolutionary history between the two species (i.e. a
>> long shared history of scrub-jay predation on Anna's nests).
>> They're both open oak woodland species that have moved north into
>> Washington from California.
>>
>> Mike Donahue
>> Seattle
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tweeters mailing list
>> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
>> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters

Daniel Brown
heron-hill at comcast.net



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20081020/905954dd/attachment.htm