Cooperation
The Mexican jay lives in habitats where lots of oak trees produce lots of acorns. The jays eat whatever acorns they can and store the rest for later use.
Flocks of 8 to 20 or more Mexican jays live in adjacent areas. Individuals in each flock cooperate with each other to defend the territory and even to build nests and feed the young.
In 1958 researcher Jerram Brown studied the Mexican jay at Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, and he concluded that the Mexican jay "as represented in southern Arizona displays a form of social organization which is shared by no other American species of bird north of the tropical regions. … Despite the responsibility of specific pairs for their own nests, there were more nest visits (other than for nest robbing) by non-owners than would be expected in a typical territorial species. … The non-owners brought nest material, fed the brooding jay on the nest, actively worked on the nest, or briefly inspected it."
Mexican jays will also band together to ward off a common enemy. In 1904 Henry Swarth reported (about the Mexican jay) that "a Red-tail or Swainson hawk sitting on some limb, furnishes a little excitement until he removes to some quieter locality; but the crowning joy of all is to find some wretched fox or wild cat quietly ensconced on some broad, sheltered oak limb. In such a case the one that finds the unhappy victim takes care to let every jay within half a mile [0.8 kilometers] know from his outcry that there is some excitement on hand; and it is nothing unusual to see thirty or forty birds gathered about the object of their aversion, letting him know in no undecided terms just what their opinion of him is."
If only people could cooperate as well with each other as the Mexican jay does with members of its own species.
Mathew Tekulsky writes a regular National Geographic News column about birding in his backyard and neighborhood in Bel Air, California.
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