[texbirds] Re: Blue Jay migration - old data
- From: Joseph Kennedy <josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: GCWarbler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 12:48:31 -0500
There are some other good sources of blue jay migration data. Several of
the hawk watches also count land bird numbers for each day. Most show up on
the birdhawk listserve with archives available. For example, 182 blue jays
passed Hawk Ridge at Duluth on September 5. Their comrade red-headed
woodpeckers are going by the Hitchcock site in Iowa too.
Someone is working to put all the old audubon field notes and successive
publications online but they have tremendous coverage of blue jay
irruptions. I counted etc for an invasion to the coast at grand island, LA
but not to the island in 1965?
A few years later there was a bigger one that had a big write up. I was
leading a group to Dauphin Island Alabama and when we got to the woods in
the early am a flock of several hundred blue jays were flying back and
forth along the wooded part of the island calling constantly. They
apparently arrived at night and were unwilling to leave. Local jays called
back and there was a vast acorn crop but the panicked birds never lit. The
people camping said they continued flying all Saturday night and then we
watched them on Sunday morning. After we left, the jays started to fall out
of the sky dead on the beach and the last survivors fell dead on Monday
morning.
There are a couple of feature articles or seasonal summaries back in there
about the jay movements.
And if anyone knows how to search the banding lab records, try searching
banded jays recovered in texas but banded up north. There would probably be
more birds using LA or AL as the southern terminus.
Back in those days, jays were one of the really irruptive birds like purple
finches. More may be staying up north like the purple finches and other
winter finches as there is more food there at feeders.
Urbanization also affects jay numbers; Much of western iowa was a bur oak
savannah and the bur oaks were very cyclical over wide areas with acorn
production. Many other oaks were planted in towns and farms as bur oaks
were "messy". Some like live oaks can have annual acorn crops or are
watered and have a crop during drought. The Iowa drought map looks like
that of Texas last year and natural food will not be doing well like it did
not do well here. But city and town trees are being watered and some have
acorns and will hold local jays all of which helps modify old
migration/wandering patterns.
On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Chuck Sexton <GCWarbler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
That tangent to my other graduate research never got published but perhaps
it's time to dust off that data, update it, and see (a) if those trends
have continued, and (b) if they might be of any utility for gaging WNV
impacts. I'll let you know when/if I can find that old cardboard box with
era graduate era data in it.
Chuck Sexton
--
Joseph C. Kennedy
on Buffalo Bayou in West Houston
Josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx
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