PS 47-121 - Canada jays (Perisoreus canadensis) prefer coniferous cache locations using visual cues

Background/Question/Methods

Food caching is a widespread strategy used by a wide variety of taxa to ensure food availability through traditionally food scarce periods. It involves the storage and, following some delay, subsequent retrieval of items for consumption. Stored food, particularly perishable food items, have the potential to degrade, and thus efforts to slow this degradation can be important to the viability of caching as a successful strategy. Evidence suggests that some conifers may aid in cache preservation, and that some caching birds may exploit conifers, capitalizing on these preservative properties. We explored eight captive Canada jays' cache site presences, focused on their ability to identify and exploit conifer trees. We subsequently explored the characteristics of conifers that individuals could use to rapidly and efficiently identify suitable cache sites.

Results/Conclusions

We found strong evidence that Canada jays can rapidly identify conifers, and that birds cache disproportionately in these locations. Additionally, we found evidence that Canada jays use visual, and not olfactory cues, in identifying these locations. Thus, we suggest that visual information is essential to both the identification, and cache site selection decisions of Canada jays, and that Canada jays make fine scale assessments of their environments leading to increased exploitation of beneficial cache sites. These results also provide an empirical link between theory and behavioural observations in Canada jays.