Florida Scrub Jays rarely travel farther than one mile from where they hatched. They have evolved to master a small area of territory and defend it fiercely. Most birds migrate or live otherwise nomadic lifestyles. The Scrub Jay only leaves a home territory in cases of natural disaster or the occasional bird that decides an area is too congested with other Jays. That bird will seek out other areas hoping to find a place to call its own or even link up with other groups. I call them “squirters” in that they feel squeezed out and “squirt” to another location. This is probably built into their DNA for species survival so that genetic bottlenecking doesn’t occur.
Linking up with other groups is not a common occurrence for Scrub Jays. They have their own cliques. The clique is usually centered around family. If an intruder Scrub Jay comes around, they will work as a group to chase it away. However, this is not always the case.
The reason I am writing this topic is because I noticed that a bird group that I interact with quite often has accepted a new bird into their group. Their “family” grew by one recently. I’m not sure where this bird came from but if I had to guess it came from the other side of the park where there exists another family. It must be one of the “squirters” which I mentioned above. There are no Scrub Jay populations within many miles of this location, so this is the only logical conclusion for me.
Accepting the new lone bird into the group probably doesn’t happen easily. I believe they chase the new bird away until it sort-of wears the group down and decides to let it join. Again, this must be built into the genome as a way to diversify the DNA so as to avoid genetic bottlenecking.
In the 10+ years I have been unofficially studying these birds, I’ve only seen a group adopt a foreign bird a few times. Scrub Jays are very strict about their territory. They almost always perceive a foreign Jay as an intruder. Seeing a new Jay join an established group is quite the surprise for me when I see it.
