California Scrub Jay

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California Scrub Jay

9/21/2021

ingSpecies: California Scrub Jay
Most recent capture date: 8/11/2021
Age: less than five months old

Notes: Some birds bite. Scrub Jays hold on, hard, with their very sharp claws digging into your hand, impressing upon you that your scientific inquiries are very much not appreciated.

1 Comment

Terry

11/4/2021 11:59:54 am

I’ve been hand feeding scrub jays in my back yard and I’ve just met one who bites—hard. I can’t figure if it’s just trying to get me to drop the nuts, or if it’s had a bad experience with a hand. It’s odd because it is one of the calmer seeming birds.

About

You never know who you'll catch when you're bird banding! We wanted to share that sense of surprise, so we'll be posting here some of the birds we catch in the course of our research. Some birds will be here because they are unusual in some way; others just because they took a nice photo.

Authors

We are biologists who study landbirds in the south San Francisco Bay Area through bird banding at Coyote Creek Field Station. We have extensive training (and official permits) for our bird handling, and we prioritize bird safety over all else.

NOTES FROM THE STATION