By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural
Reserve System
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Island scrub jays are expanding
oak forests, helping to recover natural habitat on Santa Cruz Island.
Birds are known for a
variety of things: being ugly as ducklings, nabbing worms when they turn
up early, and flocking together with those of a feather. Tree planting,
however, is all too infrequently considered an item on the avian
docket.
But on California’s largest
Channel Island, birds have donned the proverbial planting overalls of Johnny
Appleseed.
The bird in question is the
island scrub jay. Found exclusively on Santa Cruz Island, the jay is one of the
rarest bird species in the United States.
According to ornithologist Mario
Pesendorfer, who works out of the Natural Reserve System’s Santa Cruz Island
Reserve field station, the foraging habits of this vivid blue
corvid are reversing the vegetation damage inflicted by more
than a century of sheep and cattle ranching. As a postgraduate researcher with
the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Pesendorfer studies oaks and birds at several
NRS reserves, including Hastings Natural History Reservation and Sedgwick
Reserve.
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