The Island Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma insularis) also Island Jay or Santa Cruz Jay is a bird in the Aphelocoma (scrub jay) genus which is endemic to Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California. It is closely related to the "California" Scrub Jay – the coastal population of Western Scrub Jay found on the adjacent mainland – but differs in being larger, more brightly colored, and having a markedly stouter bill. The large bill size is related to its diet, incorporating the thick-shelled acorns of the Island Oak (Quercus tomentella). They will bury, or cache, the acorns in the fall and may eat them months later. They also eat insects, spiders, snakes, lizards, mice and other birds' eggs and nestlings.
Read more about Island Scrub Jay: Taxonomy, Distribution and Habitat, Conservation Status
Famous quotes containing the words island, scrub and/or jay:
“For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)