Learn about Denali National Park’s Canada Jay project with avian ecologist Emily Williams!

The Canada Jay (formerly Gray Jay) endures harsh winters in Alaska. To survive, they have adapted a unique lifestyle: store food items such as berries, fungi, insects, and animal flesh in trees. The thing that all these items have in common, though, is that they are perishable, or at risk of spoilage. This usually isn’t a problem in a landscape characterized by long periods of deep freeze. However, with increasing temperatures, their strategy may be put at risk. To understand the effects of a changing climate on Canada Jays, Denali initiated a study to learn more about the year-round requirements of this unique species. Understanding the interplay of jays’ diet, their unusual caching strategy, and jay foraging behavior as it relates to body condition, female incubation behavior, and reproductive investment will all shed light on how this iconic resident species may be faring in a warming world.