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Flames Create Habitat

Tampa Tribune photo by Robert Burke

Numerous acres are set afire during a controlled burn by Hillsborough County Conservation Dept on Balm Scrub land to help clear palmettos, small bushes, and trees. Fires like this provide a suitable habitat for wild life and stop large wild fires.

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By SUSAN M. GREEN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 13, 2008

Updated: 02/11/2008 09:33 pm

WIMAUMA - It's the original fire bird, its fate for thousands of years tied to lightning storms that crackle and spark and send flames racing through scruffy-looking trees and brush.

Dependent on the periodic scorch of the earth, the Florida scrub jay lives nowhere else in the world. It has so thoroughly adapted to the state's violent cycles of fiery death and rebirth that scientists fear the species will die off without them.

Already its numbers are dwindling.

The Florida native is in the top-20 list of birds with long-term survival threats that most worry ornithologists at the National Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy. The two nonprofit conservation organizations late last year put the scrub jay in their priority selections among 178 bird species feared to be in serious decline or flirting with extinction.

Reed Bowman, a research biologist at the nonprofit Archbold Biological Station in Lake Placid who has studied the bird for 20 years, said time is running out to bolster the species' chances of survival. He participates in a task force that is trying to find ways to manage more undeveloped land by fire, even as the challenges of doing so mount in an increasingly urbanized Florida.

"The scrub jay is dependent on fire," Bowman said. "There are still enough large areas of scrub ... that could be restored, and new populations could be created there."

The easiest way to do that, Bowman said, is to get the land ready and let jays from less suitable habitats find their way there.

"If we wait too long, the birds in the urban areas will go extinct ... And there won't be enough birds to colonize them," Bowman said, referring to restored tracts. "My guess would be we have less than 10 years."

Most of the state's scrub jays are thought to be living in the Ocala National Forest, Lake Wales Ridge in Central Florida, or near the Kennedy Space Center. Ornithologists think they once peppered the state, but human population growth and the human habit of putting out fires as soon as they start have pushed the birds into relatively small pockets of suitable habitat.

A dwindling number of Florida jays persists in neighborhoods that sprang up on scrub land. Bowman and other experts say those colonies are fizzling fast because of predators and lack of appropriate food for chicks.

With vast expanses of scrubland, southern Hillsborough County is home to a few of the common blue jay's crestless cousins. Land managers with the county's Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department think their populations could grow, with help.

South County Connection

Three to four years ago, crews chopped and burned patches of scrub totaling 300 acres on four county-owned preservation tracts in Gibsonton, Riverview, Lithia and Wimauma with a goal of mimicking the effects of Mother Nature's lightning-strike fires.

Bernie Kaiser, a biologist with the parks' resource management division, said the reborn oaks, pines and palmettos are only now rising to a height that appeals to scrub jays, about chest-high on a man.

The jays like to build their nests low in trees but shun towering leafy canopies because such forests make it easier for hawks to swoop in undetected and make a meal of baby jays. Acorns make up a big part of the adult jay's diet, and the birds like to have clear patches of sand to bury stashes for later feeding.

At one of the burn sites, a 30-acre sliver of the Balm-Boyette Scrub preserve, a kestrel perched atop a dead tree and scoured a nearby fallow field for signs of a meal. Across Balm-Boyette Road, at another burn site on the same preserve, a brown thrasher flitted through the low bushes.

So far, no new scrub jays have been identified in the remodeled habitat, Kaiser said. In recent years, researchers have recorded jays nesting in at least 10 locations in south Hillsborough.

In 2002, the county rehabilitated a portion of Balm-Boyette Scrub in anticipation of receiving some transplanted scrub jays from Venice, where suburban development was crowding them out.

Instead, a pair of previously undocumented jays discovered the site on their own and set up housekeeping. Kaiser said the pair has not been seen there in the last three years or so.

Back Yard Breeds Trouble

Scrub jays tend to be friendly and are known for eating peanuts from human hands.

Feeding them can hinder the species' long-term survival, however, by luring the mature breeders from better habitat, said Cheryl Millett, who coordinates a volunteer Jay Watch program for The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization with a state office in Altamonte Springs.

The adult birds can subsist on a diet made up largely of nuts and acorns, but not the offspring, she said. Bowman said one of the reasons suburban jay colonies are fading in landscaped backyards is lack of insects needed to nourish nestlings. Housecats also take their toll on the birds.

Bowman said he has been studying the effects of residential development on a population of scrub jays in Lake Placid since 1992. In 15 years, the group has dropped from 130 to 30 families, he said.

"They simply can't replace themselves," Bowman said.

No formal statewide census has been done since the early 1990s, when ornithologists estimated about 10,000 birds remained in Florida, he said. More recent efforts to track documented colonies indicate declines of 25 percent to 40 percent, Bowman said.

The National Audubon Society last year estimated about 8,000 birds remain.

Though Hillsborough is not considered a scrub jay haven, Millett said researchers know of a sizeable population of scrub jays living on undeveloped land just south of the Hillsborough-Manatee county line.

She said she has been approached about starting a Jay Watch program in the Hillsborough-Manatee area. If plans work out, The Nature Conservancy would bring its training program for volunteer bird-counters to a venue nearby.

Last year, 165 volunteers fanned out across 41 sites in 11 counties and helped scientists count nearly 600 scrub jays. Millett said the program has been expanding since its inception in 2002. Manatee and Polk are the closest counties to Hillsborough with jay sites included in the annual survey.

Jays nest in the spring, and their offspring become easier to detect around mid-summer, Millett said. Training programs for volunteers will start in May. Currently, the closest one planned will be in Sarasota, Millett said.

The program helps scientists identify population trends, but bird lovers can help in other ways, too, she said.

"It's the only bird that only lives in Florida," Millett said. "Honestly, I think supporting management efforts on their jays' behalf is probably the best thing people can do for them."

She and others acknowledged that last month's deadly pileup on Interstate 4 hasn't helped build a case for land managers trying to maintain old Florida scrub with fire. Investigators said dense fog mixed with smoke from a prescribed burn on preservation land in Polk County and led to zero visibility on the highway.

"I would hope prescribed burns won't stop," Millett said. "It really is the best way to maintain suitable scrub habitat, not just for scrub jays but also for rare plants and other critters that need scrub."

John Brill, spokesman for Hillsborough's parks department that oversees conservation lands, said county crews have burned a few tracts since the Jan. 9 pileup on I-4. He said the state's Division of Forestry is still issuing burn permits, but with higher scrutiny.

For information about Jay Watch, e-mail Millett at cmill ett@tnc.org or call (863) 635-7506.

Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.

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