Same eyes, same beak, even the same expression, these jays could pass as siblings wearing just slightly different outfits. The Western Scrub Jay, Aphelocoma californica named for it’s lower scrub brush habitat can be identified by its white ascot and defining eyebrow. The Mexican Jay, Aphelocoma ultramarine found in Arizona and New Mexico, while wearing the classic jay blue, sports a french gray vest. The Pinion Jay, Gymnorinus cyanoceohalus, a pinon pine forest resident, steps out a bit with its shorter tail and solid dusty blue ensemble.

Jays are a sub-family of crows (the corvid family), intelligent, opportunistic and gregarious. Like all corvids they are omnivores eating insects, robbing eggs from other birds, and partaking in the occasional carrion. However, the bulk of their diet consist of acorns and pine nuts. The jays relationship with this food source is not a casual one.

The pinon pine and a variety of oaks have actually co-evolved with the jays into having a  symbiotic relationship. The bird has behavior and the plant has physical adaptations that support each others needs to the point of dependence.

All the jays harvest pine nuts from the pinon pine and cache them as a food source, but the pinon jay is an expert. Not only does this jay consume the pine nuts as a food source but it also transports them to caching areas up to six miles away from the parent tree. Since the pinon seeds are heavy and have no wings or plumes for air travel the jay becomes the seeds transport mechanism.

When the pine cone dries up and presents its seeds they usually come in either beige or dark brown. The difference is that the beige seeds are almost always bad with no chance of germination and the pinion jay has the uncanny ability to detect this. All birds see in color, and the jay has learned that beige seeds have no nutritional value and so they do not even bother to remove them from the cone.

The dark brown seeds are what the jays are after and even the value of this seed is judged by more than just color. The pinon pine nut harvest is critical to the jays survival through the winter months, leaving them no time to make mistakes by collecting useless seeds. The jay also weighs the dark coated seed within its beak and tosses the rare empty one aside. In addition, they click them by rapidly opening and closing their beaks listening for the right sound. And so it is by sight, touch, and sound that the jay will harvest only seeds that are useful as a primary food source.

The jay can carry up to twenty pine nuts with its expandable esophagus to the nesting site. In ecological payment to pinon pine for its nutritious contribution to the jays survival the jay, having  buried (cached) more seeds than it can eat in a season actually ends up planting new pinon trees.  In an arid habitat where seeds need to be in moist soil to germinate the jays accomplish what the tree cannot do for itself.

A similar co-dependant relationship exists between the scrub jay and the acorn. These bird/tree relationships are not always in perfect balance. The pinon pine and the oak must produce an over abundance of seeds to both feed the seed transporter and have leftovers to germinate. Their mutual dependence is clear when a bad crop year results in zero jay hatchlings and zero new trees. However, nature seems to always, if left to its own devices, balance itself in the end.

By Athena Sparks, Lead Naturalist Red Rock Canyon Interpretative Association