Some have described the call of a pinyon jay as laughter across the landscape, but the predicament of the noisy, gregarious jay is no joke, as it is one of the most rapidly disappearing birds in the West.

The pinyon jay has been identified as a species of greatest conservation need in Wyoming wildlife action plans across its range after seeing its population crater by 80% in the last half-century.

It was proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act in 2022, and in August 2023 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completed a 90-day review of this petition and announced that a full 12-month review of the species’ status was warranted.

To help improve the bird’s chance of survival, two studies are underway in Wyoming.

“They’re just awesome birds and hopefully we do them right,” said Eric Atkinson, associate professor of biology at Northwest College in Powell, who is part of one of the studies. “Zach Wallace with Wyoming Game and Fish told me several months ago, ‘You know, this is one of those species that caught us all kind of flat-footed because we knew they were there, but nobody really showed a lot of strong concern about them. And when you look at the numbers, their precipitous decline, it’s about time that some of us look at it.’”

The Draper Natural History Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, along with research collaborators from the Bureau of Land Management, NWC, USFWS and the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology at the University of California-Davis began focusing on the birds in the Bighorn Basin this spring.

Meanwhile Wallace, a nongame biologist, and others in Game and Fish are conducting field research in several counties to learn more basic information on the ecology and management of pinyon jays to understand how the agency can better manage the species in Wyoming.

“Our main goal is to be able to provide timely information on the status and management needs of this species as the federal listing process proceeds,” Wallace said. “Most research available on pinyon jays is from the southwestern U.S., so it is very important for us to understand if and how that information applies in Wyoming. Regardless of whether the pinyon jay is listed, our management of this species into the future will benefit from the results of this research.”

‘You Hear Them Before You See Them’

About the size of an American robin, the pinyon jay travels in large, noisy flocks throughout pinyon-juniper and other woodlands in the western United States. This strong-flying jay gives a crowlike kaw to keep in touch with the group.

Flocks stick together year-round, breeding and foraging together in colonies that can range in size from a dozen to hundreds of individuals.

“You usually hear them before you see them, but don’t be misled; sometimes they can be amazingly quiet and you don’t even know that they’re present,” Atkinson said. “They’re kind of jokesters. One of the common names people use to apply to it is the blue crow. It does indeed look like a small blue crow. They act like it, they walk like it. Their faces are kind of crow-like.”

The bird is understudied and poorly known in most areas of its range, but data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey suggest that numbers have decreased survey-wide by 3.69% per year from 1967-2015, with an overall population loss of approximately 83.5%. Populations are predicted to be reduced by an additional 50% from 2016-2035.

Pinyon jay are found in the western United States mainly in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, central and northwest Wyoming and southeast Montana. And while there have been studies in other states, none had been done in Wyoming until these began.

“We know nothing about them really in the state of Wyoming,” said Jason Riggio, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology at the University of California-Davis, who is part of the Draper study.

Are The Birds Breeding?

Wyoming Game and Fish, including Wallace and fellow nongame biologist Frank Stetler, who are based out of Lander, began studying the bird last year to try and determine its breeding status in the state.

Other goals of their study are to identify habitats selected during the breeding season specific to Wyoming, as well as important areas for habitat conservation. They also plan further monitoring to see if birds return to the same breeding sites.

“We have many questions about pinyon jays in Wyoming, but for a species that we know so little about, it makes sense to start with the basic ones first: distribution (i.e., where are they?), habitat (i.e., why are they there?) and status (i.e., how are they doing?),” Wallace said.

During the breeding season from May to July, the pinyon jay can be found in southern Park County, southern and eastern Natrona County, northern Washakie County, southern Hot Springs County, southern Fremont County and southern Sweetwater County.

Habitats available to the bird in Wyoming differ from the core of their distribution because the state is near the northeastern edge of the species’ breeding range.

Recent studies in Colorado have shown pinyon jay to nest in juniper trees 75% of the time. Because juniper removal is a common habitat treatment for other species including greater sage-grouse habitat improvement, Game and Fish is trying to determine if pinyon jays nest in juniper woodlands.

“The Pinyon Pine tree that the species is named for barely occurs in our state, but Pinyon Jays occur in many areas of Wyoming,” Wallace said. “We are focused on understanding where jays occur and breed in the state and what kinds of habitat they are using. We are getting at that with a combination of observational surveys and tracking with satellite GPS transmitters.”

They began their research in April 2023, visiting 14 survey areas in the different counties two to three times throughout the season. Jays were detected at three of the 14 sites. Birds were observed a second time at each of these three sites in subsequent visits, two in Fremont County and one in Sweetwater County.

“We confirmed breeding at one of the 14 sites with approximately 35 birds present,” Stetler writes as part of the Nongame Section of the Annual Completion Report. “We confirmed breeding by observations of begging fledglings and recorded piping rattle calls, but were not able to determine the location of the colony site.”

The evidence of breeding was detected on June 11, 2023, in Fremont County. While no nests were located, the distance from closest known colony sites, presence of fledglings and observed behavior confirmed reproduction.

“We were pleased that our work last year documented the first record of breeding for pinyon jay in Wyoming,” Wallace said. “We had assumed they bred in the state, but it had never officially been documented.”

Coexisting With Greater Sage-Grouse

The Draper Museum of Natural History and its research collaborators began its study in the Bighorn Basin during the spring after being awarded $150,000 in funding earlier this year from the BLM.

Atkinson and Riggio are Co-Principal Investigators, along with Draper Natural History Museum Curator Corey Anco, wildlife biologist Destin Harrell of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and wildlife biologist Abel Guevara with the BLM Cody Field Office.

The study proposes to characterize habitat use by pinyon jays across limber pine-juniper stands and compare pinyon jay movement with greater sage-grouse foraging and breeding areas.

“With the new modern GPS transmitters and data loggers, we can accurately determine what components of the available habitat are most important to the species and then we can do our best to try to provide for pinyon jay habitat needs while at the same time finding areas where conifer encroachment into sage-grouse habitat is negatively affecting sage-grouse,” Harrell said. “It’s a dynamic balance of not competing habitat types, but two habitat types existing together with some common ground. What we do with this common ground, is a question we are looking to gain more awareness.” 

BLM lands play a central role in the pinyon jay’s habitat in northwestern Wyoming. At the start of the project, Guevara said that “successful pinyon jay conservation efforts rely on the thoughtful integration of public and private land needs.”

“This project is important to find the right balance of vegetation treatments that would benefit both greater sage-grouse and pinyon jays,” he added recently. “Once areas of pinyon jay habitat are delineated, it will help us determine if a future project will be beneficial for pinyon jays or sage-grouse or both.”

The group is studying at a variety of sites around the western Bighorn Basin where the limber pine woodlands intersect with grasslands including near Meeteetse, the North Fork and South Fork of the Shoshone River outside Cody, near Clark and in the Oregon Basin.

So far, the group has had good success capturing the birds. As of early July they’d captured 64 and attached 19 GPS loggers and seven satellite transmitters.

“Those movement tags are critical to this study because right now, we don’t know where these birds are roosting, where they nest, where they forage and how far they traveled between those sites,” Anco said. “And we need that information because we can’t address how large of an area these birds need if we don’t know how far they’re traveling between areas.”

The birds are weighed and measured to determine if there’s a morphological difference between pinyon jays at the northern part of the range where they’re using limber pine juniper habitats versus the pinyon pine habitats. They’re also tested for different diseases and parasites such as avian malaria and West Nile virus.

“So every bird that we have in hand we’re just trying to get as much information as we can,” Riggio said. “Is there a disease issue in the population that’s causing decline? Are they genetically and morphologically distinct in this northern part of the range where they have a really unique habitat versus the southern part of the range? And then also can we get some movement data to see how and where they’re using the landscape around here?”

Keep An Eye Out

Citizen scientists are encouraged to participate in this project by monitoring backyard bird feeders and documenting observations of pinyon jays in the wild. Datasheets are available to track observations by emailing DNHMSampling@centerofthewest.org.

“The partnership with landowners who provide the trapping locations is amazing to see,” Harrell said. “People love their birds and provide seed for the birds they enjoy watching and have around. It is a wonderful setting to give back to the pinyon jay for all the joy they bring.” 

Both the Draper group and Game and Fish are sharing information with the Pinyon Jay Working Group, which was formed in 2017 with a goal of bringing together pinyon jay experts to discuss conservation needs of the species. The large, diverse partnership plans to develop a range-wide conservation strategy for the species.

“We are already in discussions with Scott Somershoe, who is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and chair of the group,” Anco said. “He’s tasked with gathering and compiling all of the data for this species status assessment. So we’re working with Scott to provide as much useful information for that as possible.”

As their study progresses, Game and Fish biologists are continuing to do landscape-level surveys to understand exactly where pinyon jays occur in Wyoming and locate more breeding colonies. It was also a pilot year for marking birds with GPS transmitters, which will allow them to better understand the species’ habitat requirements, space use and seasonal movements.

“This year we documented breeding in another location in central Wyoming and tagged four birds with transmitters,” Wallace said. “We are currently doing on-the-ground surveys in the areas with tagged birds to understand how they are using habitat.”

Meanwhile, Draper study will extend to the eastern side of the Bighorn Basin in the upcoming year. They also hope to document breeding and roosting areas. Anco said ideally this will become a longitudinal study.

“We are not putting a cap on it,” he said. “I would like to see this study persist as long as I’m the curator at the Draper Natural History Museum.”