Pinyon Jay Monitoring Update

What started out as a radio-telemetry project on Pinyon Jays in the Desatoya Range quickly took a detour into a nest study of Pinyon Jays. Our field crew's Mercer Owen and Sue Bruner were just that good at finding Pinyon Jay nests without any tracking devices. Six colonies and 80 nests later, Mercer has been busy monitoring nest success until the nesting season was over, which it was in the second week of May. With a cool new device, a small remote camera that transmits photos wirelessly to a handheld monitor, we could see and photograph the nest contents while causing almost no disturbance to the nest. Pinyon Jays specialize on pinyon pines, and they cache their seeds so they can eat them in the winter and spring, when other food is pretty much unavailable. 

 
They nest in colonies in pinyon pines at a height of about 8 – 12 ft, and the young from the previous year help feed the new brood. Our study will provide the first comprehensive data on nest site selection by Pinyon Jays in the Great Basin, which will be critical information for advising land managers on how to protect this rapidly declining species. Here are a few photos from the last 6 weeks of the study.