GUEST COLUMNIST

Nature Journal: Know your blue jays ... and all the rest

George Ellison
Nature Journal;

As I write this, I am in Ithaca, N.Y., working with a friend on a book project. Ithaca is in the central part of the state. Dominated by a jumble of interwoven cliff faces, ravines and cascades, the landscape here would remind you of the inner Piedmont below the Blue Ridge escarpment in Western North Carolina.

Ithaca is (or was) home to a world-class university (Cornell), a world-class novelist and butterfly collector (Vladimir Nabokov), a world-class bird painter (Louis Agassiz Fuertes) and a world-class avian research facility (Cornell Lab of Ornithology).

My friend and I aren’t working on birds, per se, but she was enrolled in the lab’s eight-week Spring Field Ornithology course, which has been a mainstay in the Ithaca community, where birding is a sub-species of religion. Since its inception in 1976, the course has been led by Steve Kress, the Audubon Society’s vice president for bird conservation. More than 3,000 people have taken the course.

I was able to sit in on an evening session that featured a waterfowl movie, a concise presentation by Dr. Kress on waterfowl identification and demonstrations regarding avian morphology, taxonomy, oology (the science of eggs) and flight dynamics (wing-to-body ratio, etc.), using the lab’s collection of 50,000 specimens from around the world.

This was only my second visit to the lab, which features an array of programs available on site and online. But in a sense I have visited the lab at least once a week for many years via its Birds of North America Online subscription site.

The BNA provides life histories for more than 700 species found in Canada and the U.S. Through the years it has been my go-to source for up-to-date information when writing Nature Journal columns about birds: an endless array of warblers, sparrows, thrushes, gnatcatchers, soras, herons, ducks, crows, cardinals, ravens, blue jays, kinglets, bitterns, and on and on ... so many wonderful birds.

The ongoing response to Nature Journal columns featuring birds convinces me that the level of interest in birding in WNC is both widespread and increasingly sophisticated. It’s not likely you will venture to Ithaca in the near future, but you might want to take a look at the Birds of North America Online to see if it’s your cup of tea.

It’ll cost you $5 for a month’s subscription. Thereafter, there are reduced prices for yearly, multiyear or lifelong subscriptions. (Of course, you can always consider the print version, which was finished in 2002: 18 volumes, 18,000 pages.)

All about jay

Let’s use the blue jay as an example. You’ve seen (and heard) them all your life. But suddenly you feel the urgent need to know more about them. The BNA pulls up one main entry as well as various articles, maps, photos, etc. The main entry is divided into more than 15 sections covering distribution, breeding, sounds, behavior, etc.

Therein you learn that the 19th century naturalist Alexander Wilson described blue jays as being “distinguished as a kind of beau among feathered tenants of our woods, by the brilliancy of his dress; and like most other coxcombs, makes himself still more conspicuous by his loquacity, and the oddness of his tones and gestures.”

Moving on, you discover that “Recent use of cameras at nests has documented jays as major nest predators in both urban and rural settings” and that “depredation of nests increased with forest fragmentation and with exurban development in the southern Appalachians.”

Now we get to the part that interests me: “Because of extensive gradation of sounds, the ability to produce two different sounds simultaneously via the syrinx, and mimicry of environmental sounds, the total vocabulary of Blue Jays is immense and precludes precise categorization.”

Here’s a partial list:

Jeer Calls. Harsh, loud, nonmusical calls rich in harmonics, but varying in number of sound sources, frequency, inflection, tempo, nature of modulations and repetition. Used for assembly, mobbing, when potentially threatened by human or predator and probably for contact.

Pumphandle Calls. Clear, musical whistles, usually with liquid or bell-like quality, sometimes with harsh or “gurgling” overtones. Some are inflected. Many sound like an old-fashioned hand-operated water pump or clothesline pulley, or a squeaky gate.

Intrapair Contact Calls. Low-volume, guttural clucking or “chukking” sounds, grading to whiny with increased excitement. Rattle Calls are often emitted by females engaged in early spring and autumn flocks, especially in times of heightened excitement of the flock.

Other Calls and Sounds. In addition to the major groups of call types outlined above, many clicks, chortles, mews, whirrs, whistles, twitters, buzzes and other noises are emitted, often as parts of other calls or as components of the Whisper Song.

George Ellison is a naturalist and writer. His wife, Elizabeth Ellison, is a watercolor artist and paper-maker who has a gallery-studio in Bryson City. Contact them at info@georgeellison.com or info@elizabethellisonwatercolors.com or write to P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, NC 28713.

LEARN MORE• Visit the main Cornell Lab of Ornithology site at www.birds.cornell.edu, from which links will lead you to the Birds of North America Online subscription site at http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna.• Watch an informative video about blue jays (including why “Blue Jays Aren’t Blue”) at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggmlkzILz5E