A new University of Guelph study shows that gray jays hoping to
survive and reproduce through Canada's harsh winters need to be
able to store food in the right kinds of trees. The study
appears in Oecologia and was co-authored by Prof. Ryan Norris,
Department of Integrative Biology; Brian Kielstra, an
undergraduate student in the Department of Geography; and Dan
Strickland, retired chief naturalist of Algonquin Park in
Ontario. Unlike most birds that migrate for winter, gray jays
are year-round residents in the Canadian boreal forest. In
winter, they rely on berries, fungi, insects, carcass meat and
other foods cached in nooks and crannies of trees during summer
and fall. They remember where they've stored tens of thousands
of food items scattered throughout a territory up to 160
hectares in size. "What is perhaps more remarkable is that
female gray jays start breeding in mid-February when
temperatures are routinely below minus 15 degrees Celsius and
there is very little food around, so these caches are cruci