This blog post is merely to provide a visual illustration, by way of a map, of the expansion of the California Scrub-Jay across Washington, British Columbia, eastern Oregon, Idaho, and even Montana (one record so far). It is intended to complement my more detailed article, “Tracking Expansion of the California Scrub-Jay Into the Pacific Northwest”, in the Washington Ornithological Society (WOS) News, August-September 2021 edition.
As becomes clear in the article, these are not hard lines. The jays are advancing gradually, not in a solid wave. Typically, a single jay will appear well outside the known range (e.g. Spokane). Within a year or two, there will be several. Then they’ll be breeding. Then they will begin expanding further. Meanwhile, a wave of jays will be backfilling the new territory, with densities increasing annually. The lines in this map are as much art as science, but are intended to show the primary region were jays were “regular and expected”. There were always outliers, pioneer dispersers expanding the range. Records beyond the 2020 line are shown as pale blue dots.
CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE
The expansion of the California Scrub-Jay mimics that of several other species, mostly non-migratory or short-distance migrants, rapidly expanding from California and Oregon into the Pacific Northwest.
The jay’s expansion, when considered in the context of timing and trends in other species, is likely a function of a warming climate combined with suitable food sources. For more discussion of this, see the WOS article linked above.
It will be interesting to see where the 2030 scrub-jay “contour line” will be. I predict they’ll be on Vancouver Island from Victoria to Campbell River, as well as up the Sunshine Coast, up the Okanagan Valley to Kelowna and possibly Kamloops, and east to Idaho, from Coeur d’Alene in the north throughout the Snake River Valley in the south.
After that, they face some formidable hurdles. The biggest obstacles to their expansion further north and east will be habitat with limited food sources (e.g. high mountains). That said, they’ve already shown some ability to travel up mountain valleys and potentially cross the Cascades north of Mount Rainier.
I’ve received a note from Peter Wimberger at Univ of Puget Sound, noting first documentation of CASJ in Portland, OR in 1900, so they’ve been that far for a long time.
Peter writes,
“We have uncovered some of Stanley Jewett’s field notes and day books from 1915 to 1947. They have some bird lists in them and he notes scrub jays in various parts of Oregon. An entry that might interest you is this one from Dec. 30, 1915 that says:
Saw 2 Calif. Jays in willows and ??? at foot of Umatilla Ave and Sellwood St., Portland, Ore today. These are first ever seen within limits of Portland.
I also found a copy of his and Gabrielson’s Birds of Portland from 1929 where they cite this sighting as well as Currier collecting two nests of Calif Jays in Portland area in 1906. Finley collected one in Portland area in 1900.”
Great stuff!
LikeLike
Pingback: Heading south for winter, more birds are choosing the Pacific Northwest | The Cottonwood Post
Pingback: eBird Trends maps reveal dramatic northward range shifts in Eastern species | The Cottonwood Post