Subject: [Tweeters] Re: Western Scrub-Jays
Date: Mar 4 13:16:28 2011
From: Scott Downes - downess at charter.net


In regard to breeding scrub-jays in Olympia, yes, the Wahl et al. reference was referring to first documented breeding of scrub-jays in Olympia. In light of what I'm sure are to be other reports of people chiming in for when they first saw them in their area, I think its important to define what is classified as range expansion. I would define (and be supported by a fair number of references) range expansion not by the vagrant birds, but by numbers of birds regularly occurring in an area and in the case of a species like the scrub-jay, I think I'd have to include some residency and breeding. Thus, for areas there are likely to be two dates, one for when the species was first recorded and a second for when they expanded their range into that area. For the Yakima area the first scrub-jay was reported in 1972 (Stepniewski 1999) but their range probably hasn't included Yakima until the last 5 or so years.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA