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California Scrub Jay | Aphelocoma californica
Californische struikgaai | Chara californiana
The California Scrub Jay is a slim, long-tailed, crestless jay with a blue head, wings and tail, a grey-brown back and a white throat bordered by a blue breast band. It is noisy and conspicuous, often perching in the open on top of a shrub or post. In the guide area it lives only on the Baja California peninsula.
Voice
Harsh, rasping calls such as a rising shreeep, and rapid series of check-check-check. Also softer, scratchy sounds near the nest.
Recording: Bobby Wilcox — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
27–31 cm, of which much is tail. Head, wings and tail bright blue, back grey-brown. Narrow white supercilium, dark cheek. Throat white with fine streaks, bordered below by a blue, almost complete breast band. Rest of underparts greyish white. Bill black, fairly short and stout, with a slightly hooked tip. Birds in the south of the peninsula are paler and whiter below. Juveniles are greyer and duller.
Confusion species
Woodhouse's Scrub Jay Aphelocoma woodhouseii occurs in the guide area only on the Mexican mainland; it is duller, with greyer underparts, a weaker breast band and a thinner bill. Steller's Jay Cyanocitta stelleri, in the mountains of northern Baja California, has a long dark crest and a blackish head and breast.
Habitat
Chaparral, oak woodland and oak scrub, pine-oak forest in the mountains, scrub along dry washes and in arid country, and gardens and parks. It eats insects, seeds, acorns, fruit and sometimes eggs and nestlings of other birds. It stores food by burying acorns and seeds in the ground.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Western North America, from south-western Washington through Oregon and California to the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. In the guide area in Baja California and Baja California Sur; on the Mexican mainland it is replaced by Woodhouse's Scrub Jay.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
It often perches in the open on top of a shrub or post and calls loudly from there; in villages and around farms in northern Baja California it occurs regularly.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common and well adapted to human-modified land.
Scientific name
Aphelocoma californica | (Vigors, 1839)
Vigors described the species in 1839 as Garrulus californicus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Aphelocoma was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Aphelocoma is Greek, from aphelēs 'simple, smooth' and komē 'hair of the head', after the uncrested head. californica means 'of California', where the type was collected. The specimen the first description was based on came from Monterey County, California (USA).