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Florida Scrub-Jay: Field Notes on a Vanishing Bird
Florida Historical Society Stetson Kennedy Award
A portrait of a species on the brink
The only bird species that lives exclusively in Florida, the Florida scrub-jay was once common across the peninsula. But as development over the last 100 years reduced the habitat on which the bird depends from 39 counties to three, the species became endangered. With a writer's eye and an explorer's spirit, Mark Walters travels the state to report on the natural history and current predicament of Florida's flagship bird.
Tracing the millions of years of evolution and migration that led to the development of songbirds and this unique species of jay, Walters describes the Florida bird's long, graceful tail, its hues that blend from one to the next, and its notoriously friendly manner. He then focuses on the massive land-reclamation and canal-building projects of the twentieth century that ate away at the ancient oak scrub heartlands where the bird was abundant, reducing its population by 90 percent.
Walters also investigates conservation efforts taking place today. On a series of field excursions, he introduces the people who are leading the charge to save the bird from extinction--those who gather for annual counts of the species in fragmented and overlooked areas of scrub; those who relocate populations of scrub-jays out of harm's way; those who survey and purchase land to create wildlife refuges; and those who advocate for the prescribed fires that keep scrub ecosystems inhabitable for the species.
A loving portrayal of a very special bird, Florida Scrub-Jay is also a thoughtful reflection on the ethical and emotional weight of protecting a species in an age of catastrophe. Now is the time to act, says Walters, or we will lose the scrub-jay forever.
A portrait of a species on the brink
The only bird species that lives exclusively in Florida, the Florida scrub-jay was once common across the peninsula. But as development over the last 100 years reduced the habitat on which the bird depends from 39 counties to three, the species became endangered. With a writer's eye and an explorer's spirit, Mark Walters travels the state to report on the natural history and current predicament of Florida's flagship bird.
Tracing the millions of years of evolution and migration that led to the development of songbirds and this unique species of jay, Walters describes the Florida bird's long, graceful tail, its hues that blend from one to the next, and its notoriously friendly manner. He then focuses on the massive land-reclamation and canal-building projects of the twentieth century that ate away at the ancient oak scrub heartlands where the bird was abundant, reducing its population by 90 percent.
Walters also investigates conservation efforts taking place today. On a series of field excursions, he introduces the people who are leading the charge to save the bird from extinction--those who gather for annual counts of the species in fragmented and overlooked areas of scrub; those who relocate populations of scrub-jays out of harm's way; those who survey and purchase land to create wildlife refuges; and those who advocate for the prescribed fires that keep scrub ecosystems inhabitable for the species.
A loving portrayal of a very special bird, Florida Scrub-Jay is also a thoughtful reflection on the ethical and emotional weight of protecting a species in an age of catastrophe. Now is the time to act, says Walters, or we will lose the scrub-jay forever.
- GenresBirdsNonfictionScience
176 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 8, 2021
3 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 16, 2021
A naturalist perspective of the Florida Scrub-Jay's prognosis for persistence in the Anthropocene. Walters travels around the state visiting scrub habitat, conservation land managers, and Archbold researchers. Along the way he discusses bits of the species' life history and historical land management, agricultural and "development" practices. Well done although I would have preferred a more thorough treatment of each of the 10 metapopulations. The author takes a dim view of the future where many people are working hard to conserve the jays for the long term.
September 7, 2021
Mark Walters’s account of the rapidly declining Florida Scrub-jay is a compelling case study of many of the land management and conservation issues confronting natural area professionals framed by a charismatic species with very strict habitat requirements.
Florida Scrub-jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens)are closely related to the widespread Western Scrub-jay (A. californica) that occupies dry, brushy chaparral in the Southwest from Texas and Mexico northward to Oregon. About two million years ago, sea levels fell during the onset of the Pleistocene glacial advance and exposed sandy ridges along the northern Gulf Coast. These dry ridges allowed some western species including scrub-jays to migrate eastward and colonize what is now the Florida peninsula. When continental glacial ice melted, sea levels rose and isolated the scrub-jays and the other western species in Florida. Over thousands of years, these organisms evolved into new species adapted to the conditions on Florida’s high dunes and sand ridges. More recently, separate populations of scrub-jays became concentrated in four regions of the Florida peninsula.
Because Florida’s well-drained uplands are the most valuable landscapes for cattle ranches, citrus groves, and housing, they have been targeted for development. Scrub-jays require exactly the same landscapes and, as a result, have suffered dramatic declines as scrub habitat has shrunken dramatically.
Walters spent three years crisscrossing peninsular Florida, visiting each of the birds’ population centers. Walters is a veterinarian and a journalist but not a scrub-jay scientist, so local experts escorted him on driving and walking tours through the habitats. Detailed accounts of these guided explorations, presented as short chapters, constitute the majority of the book. Furthermore, because the challenges facing the birds’ survival differ somewhat depending on the region, Walters organized his book in four sections that allows him to focus on regional threats and conservation opportunities.
The first section concentrates on mainland Brevard County and adjacent barrier islands along the central Atlantic coast. Walters’s grandfather lived in the county a century ago, where he was surrounded by scrub-jays as he drove the sandy coastal roads and fished on the barrier islands. Today, development has overwhelmed Brevard and scrub-jays persist on the mainland only in tiny, scattered preserves that are too small, too isolated, and too disturbed to sustain viable populations. In contrast, on South Merritt Island, the Kennedy Space Center and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge retain large portions of the original coastal dune scrub. As a result, scrub-jays thrive in these refugia. Despite their large numbers, though, the birds are threatened by inbreeding and declining genetic diversity because scrub-jays do not disperse readily over long distances—especially across inimical habitat—so there are few if any additions to the Merritt Island population. In addition, this isolated population faces loss of habitat from sea level rise and could be eliminated altogether if the island were to receive a direct hit from a destructive hurricane. Even more subtle changes threaten the birds. Scrub is an early successional habitat that historically was maintained through periodic fires. Because of the proximity of the Kennedy Space Center, prescribed burning is circumscribed and often prohibited outright, so land managers are constrained in their ability to maintain the habitat the birds require.
On the Gulf Coast in Manatee and Sarasota counties, the birds’ plight is similar. Coastal areas used to support large populations, but housing and golf course development eliminated nearly all scrub near the Gulf beaches, and continuing infill development and encroachments likely have doomed the few scrub-jay family groups that remain in degraded natural areas. Inland from the hyper-developed coast, though, Manatee County has proactively expanded two open space preserves in cooperation with one of Florida’s phosphate ore surface mining companies. Through prescribed burning and mechanical vegetation removal, county land managers are gradually restoring scrub habitat in these extensive preserve. In addition, the phosphate mining company is paying to capture scrub-jays on land it intends to mine and relocate the birds to the restored scrub—a strategy that so far has proven to be successful.
The Lake Wales Ridge running along the spine of the peninsula is a sandy remnant of a time when sea levels were much higher and most of coastal Florida was submerged. The ridge embraces the highest point in the state outside the Panhandle (Sugar Loaf Mountain, 312 feet) at its north end, and the Archbold Biological Station near its south. Between the two, where citrus groves, ranches and urbanization have not altered the landscape, lie a string of scrub reserves. Some like Archbold are large enough to support viable scrub-jay populations. More importantly, though, the islands in this archipelago of hard-won preserves, managed by a combination of state, federal, county agencies and private nonprofits, are near enough to one another to allow scrub-jays to move among them, thereby ensuring gene mixing.
By far, the largest scrub-jay population occupies appropriate habitat within Ocala National Forest in north-central Florida. Because the species is federally endangered and the national forest is federal land, between 1999 and 2016 forest managers were able to increase the area of the forest managed primarily for scrub-jays and other scrub species from 1,900 to 52,000 acres, or 12% of the forest. No one knows precisely how many scrub-jays inhabit the forest, but estimates suggest there are about 1,100 family groups—more than occur in all other scrub habitat combined. While the large Ocala population helps to ensure that the species probably will not go extinct, members of the multi-agency Florida Scrub-jay Recovery Team emphasize that the bird needs both large populations such as those in Ocala, Merritt Island and Archbold, as well as smaller, dispersed groups in order to maintain genetic diversity.
Author Mark Walters is first and foremost a journalist, and this book is written for a general audience. The only scientific names of organisms included in the text are those of a few closely-related scrub mints with no common names; Walters never even cites the scientific name of his principal subject. Nevertheless, he addresses myriad topics that are important to natural area professionals, and he does so in a well-written, accessible and engaging (albeit sobering) presentation. To recruit the general population to support Florida Scrub-jay preservation, Walters has written a call to arms that, at the same time, doesn’t give conservation biology and natural area stewardship short shrift.
Florida Scrub-jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens)are closely related to the widespread Western Scrub-jay (A. californica) that occupies dry, brushy chaparral in the Southwest from Texas and Mexico northward to Oregon. About two million years ago, sea levels fell during the onset of the Pleistocene glacial advance and exposed sandy ridges along the northern Gulf Coast. These dry ridges allowed some western species including scrub-jays to migrate eastward and colonize what is now the Florida peninsula. When continental glacial ice melted, sea levels rose and isolated the scrub-jays and the other western species in Florida. Over thousands of years, these organisms evolved into new species adapted to the conditions on Florida’s high dunes and sand ridges. More recently, separate populations of scrub-jays became concentrated in four regions of the Florida peninsula.
Because Florida’s well-drained uplands are the most valuable landscapes for cattle ranches, citrus groves, and housing, they have been targeted for development. Scrub-jays require exactly the same landscapes and, as a result, have suffered dramatic declines as scrub habitat has shrunken dramatically.
Walters spent three years crisscrossing peninsular Florida, visiting each of the birds’ population centers. Walters is a veterinarian and a journalist but not a scrub-jay scientist, so local experts escorted him on driving and walking tours through the habitats. Detailed accounts of these guided explorations, presented as short chapters, constitute the majority of the book. Furthermore, because the challenges facing the birds’ survival differ somewhat depending on the region, Walters organized his book in four sections that allows him to focus on regional threats and conservation opportunities.
The first section concentrates on mainland Brevard County and adjacent barrier islands along the central Atlantic coast. Walters’s grandfather lived in the county a century ago, where he was surrounded by scrub-jays as he drove the sandy coastal roads and fished on the barrier islands. Today, development has overwhelmed Brevard and scrub-jays persist on the mainland only in tiny, scattered preserves that are too small, too isolated, and too disturbed to sustain viable populations. In contrast, on South Merritt Island, the Kennedy Space Center and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge retain large portions of the original coastal dune scrub. As a result, scrub-jays thrive in these refugia. Despite their large numbers, though, the birds are threatened by inbreeding and declining genetic diversity because scrub-jays do not disperse readily over long distances—especially across inimical habitat—so there are few if any additions to the Merritt Island population. In addition, this isolated population faces loss of habitat from sea level rise and could be eliminated altogether if the island were to receive a direct hit from a destructive hurricane. Even more subtle changes threaten the birds. Scrub is an early successional habitat that historically was maintained through periodic fires. Because of the proximity of the Kennedy Space Center, prescribed burning is circumscribed and often prohibited outright, so land managers are constrained in their ability to maintain the habitat the birds require.
On the Gulf Coast in Manatee and Sarasota counties, the birds’ plight is similar. Coastal areas used to support large populations, but housing and golf course development eliminated nearly all scrub near the Gulf beaches, and continuing infill development and encroachments likely have doomed the few scrub-jay family groups that remain in degraded natural areas. Inland from the hyper-developed coast, though, Manatee County has proactively expanded two open space preserves in cooperation with one of Florida’s phosphate ore surface mining companies. Through prescribed burning and mechanical vegetation removal, county land managers are gradually restoring scrub habitat in these extensive preserve. In addition, the phosphate mining company is paying to capture scrub-jays on land it intends to mine and relocate the birds to the restored scrub—a strategy that so far has proven to be successful.
The Lake Wales Ridge running along the spine of the peninsula is a sandy remnant of a time when sea levels were much higher and most of coastal Florida was submerged. The ridge embraces the highest point in the state outside the Panhandle (Sugar Loaf Mountain, 312 feet) at its north end, and the Archbold Biological Station near its south. Between the two, where citrus groves, ranches and urbanization have not altered the landscape, lie a string of scrub reserves. Some like Archbold are large enough to support viable scrub-jay populations. More importantly, though, the islands in this archipelago of hard-won preserves, managed by a combination of state, federal, county agencies and private nonprofits, are near enough to one another to allow scrub-jays to move among them, thereby ensuring gene mixing.
By far, the largest scrub-jay population occupies appropriate habitat within Ocala National Forest in north-central Florida. Because the species is federally endangered and the national forest is federal land, between 1999 and 2016 forest managers were able to increase the area of the forest managed primarily for scrub-jays and other scrub species from 1,900 to 52,000 acres, or 12% of the forest. No one knows precisely how many scrub-jays inhabit the forest, but estimates suggest there are about 1,100 family groups—more than occur in all other scrub habitat combined. While the large Ocala population helps to ensure that the species probably will not go extinct, members of the multi-agency Florida Scrub-jay Recovery Team emphasize that the bird needs both large populations such as those in Ocala, Merritt Island and Archbold, as well as smaller, dispersed groups in order to maintain genetic diversity.
Author Mark Walters is first and foremost a journalist, and this book is written for a general audience. The only scientific names of organisms included in the text are those of a few closely-related scrub mints with no common names; Walters never even cites the scientific name of his principal subject. Nevertheless, he addresses myriad topics that are important to natural area professionals, and he does so in a well-written, accessible and engaging (albeit sobering) presentation. To recruit the general population to support Florida Scrub-jay preservation, Walters has written a call to arms that, at the same time, doesn’t give conservation biology and natural area stewardship short shrift.
June 25, 2023
I continue to be enamored with this gregarious delightful Scrub Jay and equally worried about its future. The scrub habitat it depends on is hanging by threads and thankfully there are dedicated people willing to give them a fighting chance
with annual surveys, banding of new birds, controlled habitat burns and even translocation making small steps in securing a future for FL Scrub Jays.
with annual surveys, banding of new birds, controlled habitat burns and even translocation making small steps in securing a future for FL Scrub Jays.
June 10, 2025
A well researched book about the efforts to conserve the Florida Scrub-Jay. Like most books about threatened and endangered species, the story is sad but undeniably important. Walters travels to many of the last remaining scrub-jay holdouts and interviews key players fighting for the species.
October 13, 2024
With each new book on nature I read, I become more of a conservationist. This was an excellent book.
January 7, 2026
I think this book is best for someone who been around Florida scrub but hasn't ever appreciated it. It's short and accessible with shallow looks at the major populations/regions of scrub jay habitat as well as brief histories of the areas.
This book was more about field notes about the wanton anthropogenic destruction of the scrub ecosystem with the scrub jay being but a minor character by which to illustrate the scale of damage of Florida's truly unique habitat than it was about the bird itself. We're delivered a personal account about Freddie but are left with a relatively sparse level of detail about the scrub jay species itself.
This book was more about field notes about the wanton anthropogenic destruction of the scrub ecosystem with the scrub jay being but a minor character by which to illustrate the scale of damage of Florida's truly unique habitat than it was about the bird itself. We're delivered a personal account about Freddie but are left with a relatively sparse level of detail about the scrub jay species itself.
September 1, 2022
A lugubrious book about the plight of the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay.
I wish there had been a bit more vivid description of the "scrub". Is it kind of chaparral with palmettos? I got the picture that overdevelopment is wrecking it and there are endangered plants, but no sensory images or information about what other animals live there. Likewise, it wasn't clear in what ways the Florida jay is different from its close and common cousin the California Scrub-Jay or why it can't live with any level of human development. I was left depressed but not fully informed.
I wish there had been a bit more vivid description of the "scrub". Is it kind of chaparral with palmettos? I got the picture that overdevelopment is wrecking it and there are endangered plants, but no sensory images or information about what other animals live there. Likewise, it wasn't clear in what ways the Florida jay is different from its close and common cousin the California Scrub-Jay or why it can't live with any level of human development. I was left depressed but not fully informed.
October 13, 2021
This is a short but informative book that will get you up-to-date on the imperiled Florida Scrub-Jay. I teach about these jays as part of my job, but I found this helpful for giving me a statewide perspective. I also highly recommend his book on the Dusky Seaside Sparrow.
October 27, 2025
Excellent read to learn about the history and future of the Florida stub jay.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews