Scrub-jay fight for survival continues

MANATEE — No one is certain how many Florida scrub-jays remain, either in Manatee County or throughout Florida. But the fear is that as this rare bird’s habitat continues to diminish, the bird will go with it.

A group of environmentalists from Manatee and elsewhere, however, is battling to save Florida’s only bird species that lives nowhere else on earth.

Florida scrub-jay volunteers are spending hundreds of hours a year tracking the birds for the “Jay Watch” report, which is put out by the The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit group.

The report recently concluded that scrub-jay numbers declined again in 2009.

A very rough estimate is 7,500 birds in the state, said Cheryl Millett, a biologist with The Nature Conservancy.

About a hundred years ago, there were probably 100,000 scrub-jays in Florida, Millett said.

The report also said there are not enough controlled burns to keep the scrub to the low height desired by the birds.

Even though the bird is protected under its current status as a threatened species by federal and state agencies, another major hurdle it continues to face is that the land it covets is also coveted by developers, said Karen Fraley, who owns Around the Bend Nature Tours.

“The scrub land is the highest and driest ecosystem, thus it’s easier to build on,” Fraley said. “You don’t have flood-control issues.”

Manatee County has been lauded by the volunteers for its efforts to increase jay habitat.

“At Duette Preserve they cut down oaks, burned and created 4,500 acres of new habitat,” Fraley said. “But we don’t know yet if the birds will come.”

What the birds like about living low, amid a few pines and patchy tracts of sand, is that predators are disinterested, Fraley said.

They eat mice, lizards, insects, berries and flowers in the summer and acorns in the winter.

“Hawks prefer high trees, so with low scrubs you have few hawks, which is good for jays,” Fraley said.

The scrub-jay is making its stand mostly on lands that have been preserved by county, state and federal agencies.

In Manatee, 20 scrub-jay volunteers put in 220 hours for Jay Watch in 2009, Millett said.

The number of jays in Manatee County ranges from 12 to a number no one wants to guess.

Little Manatee River Southfork tract and the Edward W. Chance Reserve at Gilley Creek are two favorite jay sites in Manatee. They are both along Highway 62, west of Duette, Millett said.

The third site is Moody Branch, northwest of Duette.

When asked why Manatee residents should care about scrub-jays, volunteers paint a portrait of a charismatic creature with a delightful personality.

“They are in the same family as crows, ravens and jays, so they are very intelligent and like to investigate,” Millett said.

On a recent field trip she led in Sarasota to see the birds, it was as if they were acting on cue, Millett said.

“I was talking about how they take acorns and tamp them down in the sand and I turn around and see a jay tamping one down in the sand,” Millett said. “It was like I had little scrub-jay actors.”

The jays also have a sentinel system worked out where several birds stand guard from the highest trees. They will call out if there is danger and the family members dive into bushes.

Another endearing trait is that the birds mostly mate for life, said Manatee County volunteer Steven Sauers, a professional ecologist who surveyed the birds in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

“What fascinates me is the nature of their family unit,” Sauers said. “A scrub-jay family group can have two breeders and six helpers, and that group will cooperatively raise each year’s new hatchlings and defend juveniles in territory as much as 25 acres.”

Millett plans to have a class for new scrub-jay volunteers at Little Manatee River Southfork tract May 26. For more information, call Millett at (863) 635-7506, ext. 205.

Richard Dymond, Herald reporter, can be reached at 748-0411, ext. 6686.