Nothing like a split in the AOU list to liven things up in early July!
As others have commented, most of the scrub-jays around towns and
ranchsteads in southern Lake County certainly appear to be of the
(former) subspecies californica, which I guess we'll now (again) be
calling California Scrub-Jays.
This includes birds that I've seen around downtown Adel, south of there
at ranches along Twentymile Road to the southern edge of the Warner
Valley , north to Plush, east along the Hwy 140 grade up Greaser Canyon,
and also around the Lakeview area.
In past years I've seen a few scrub-jays, generally in more xeric
situations away from human habitation in the tri-state (CA-NV-OR) area,
that appeared to have minimal "necklaces" and overall a more grayish
cast. Those locations include (1) north of Cow Head Lake (north of Fort
Bidwell) in extreme NW California, (2) near the junction of Big Valley x
Long Valley Rd in Oregon SW of Adel, (3) WNW of Adel in a dry gulch off
of Deep Creek canyon, and (4) in the Little Sheldon area on the west
side of Sheldon NWR in Nevada. All of these birds were also more wary
and more difficult to get good looks at than the usual California
Scrub-Jays. All were in the type of habitat where you can also find
Juniper Titmouse.
My notes on most if not all of those sightings should be in
www.birdnotes.net. The ones near Cow Head Lake *might* have been
juvenile scrub-jays, the others appeared to be adults.
My hunch for many years now is that the ranges of californica and
woodhouseii are intercalated in the tri-state area, with californica
more numerous but mainly sticking to more riparian situations, while
woodhouseii uses the more upland, xeric habitat, which usually takes
more effort to access. Now that these taxons have been elevated to full
species status, hopefully that will provide more incentive for more
people to search in the latter type of areas. Similar to Juniper
Titmouse, I suspect that once birders put in more focused effort, we'll
learn that Woodhouse's Scrub-Jays aren't really as rare in southern Lake
County as the paucity of reports to date might suggest.
Happy birding,
Joel
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
