The Blue Jays are one game away from a first World Series in thirty two years! So we thought we’d celebrate by telling you all about the jay species that we have here in Canada.
Over almost thirty five years, the CWHC has inspected almost six and a half thousand Blue jays, then a small number of Canada jays and Steller’s jays. The majority of these came from Ontario and Québec with submissions from every province and two of the three territories.
The best-known jay species in Canada are the Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis), the blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata), and the Steller’s jay (Cyanocitta stelleri). A lesser known and more recently established jay species in Canada is the California scrub-jay (Aphelocoma californica).
Canada jays are found in boreal forests of North America and are found in every Canadian province and territory, making it such a good candidate as Canada’s national bird species and our CWHC
logo. Although the status in Canada is listed as ‘secure’, the Canada jay is identified as a priority for conservation and stewardship as more than 80% of its global breeding population is in Canada.
Blue jays are found across Canada’s southern forests and is a common sight in urban areas, where many people will be familiar with their loud, screeching vocalizations. They are very adapted to living near people and their populations appear to have increased throughout its Canadian range.
Steller’s jays are found in western Canadian coniferous forests and is the provincial bird of British Columbia. The species is considered secure in Canada with
populations believed to be stable since the 1970s. Steller’s jays are closely related to blue jays and is known to hybridize.
California scrub-jays have been regularly observed in southern British Columbia since the 1990s, but Canadian populations are likely fewer than 10 individuals. Due to its recent and slow establishment, the species status is considered vulnerable but is also data deficient in Canada.
While all jays are passerine birds (other than those that are sports teams) in the family Corvidae, jays are not actually a taxonomic (or closely related) group of bird species. Rather, they possess some superficial similarities in appearance or behaviour that satisfy the human urge to group them together. Jays are often more colourful than their other corvid cousins (such as crows, ravens, and magpies). They are omnivorous, eating lots of different things, such as insects, fruits, and nuts. Jays (and other corvids) are known to cache their food across the landscape, allowing them to feed all year, a behaviour called ‘scatter-hoarding’. They typically cache more food than they actually eat, which allows disturbed, cached seeds to grow into trees. Several tree species depend on these birds to reproduce and spread, and this scatter-hoarding aids in habitat restoration.