The mystery of the pinyon jay: A bird species native to the West has declined dramatically—and we’re still trying to figure out why

In the spring of 2020, I started going for hikes on a part of Peavine Mountain I had hardly ever visited before, just above the Northgate neighborhood in northwest Reno. That was the first spring of COVID-19, and in a sense, it was the coronavirus that brought me there; in those early, uninformed days of the pandemic, I was worried about getting infected by other hikers, and that part of Peavine was mostly empty of people and their virus-laden breath. 

Those naïve days of fretting about COVID while hiking are long gone, but I keep returning to that same area anyway. I go there now partly because I’ve become attached to the landscape—the shrubby slopes, the scattered outcrops, the pines silhouetted against strange white and orange soils—but mostly, I go there because it’s a great place to find pinyon jays. These birds look like small blue crows and, unlike other jays, usually move around in flocks. I go to follow the jays and, if I’m lucky, to sit in the middle of a flock, experiencing the strange spectacle of these noisy, gregarious birds. 

I’ve been to the pinyon jay area in every month of the year, watching the birds on sweltering summer days and post-holing after them through deep snow. I’ve seen pairs warily building nests, young birds bothering adults for food, and big flocks foraging on the ground, with the birds at the back end continually flying up to the front, like they’re playing a giant game of leapfrog. I’ve recorded their diverse calls, including the typical quavering caw that sounds like someone either laughing maniacally or crying out in pain. I’ve become a sort of pinyon jay fanatic. 

I don’t expect to convince anyone else to spend their free time wandering around on Peavine looking for pinyon jays. But I do think these birds are special. For one thing, they are social in a way that weirdly mirrors our own lives, which makes them fascinating for us humans to be around, in the same way that it’s fascinating to watch a troop of monkeys. Also, the total population of pinyon jays has declined dramatically over the past 50 years, making them a focal point for conservation.  

In August 2023, that focus sharpened further, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began evaluating the pinyon jay for listing under the Endangered Species Act, after the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife petitioned the secretary of the Interior to list the species as endangered or threatened. So, for a lot of people—including land managers, professional biologists and birdwatchers—these jays are now “of special concern.”  

The time of the pinyon jay is now. 

As social as humans 

Ned Bohman talks about pinyon jays like a fellow fanatic. Bohman is a biologist at the Great Basin Bird Observatory (GBBO), a Reno-based nonprofit dedicated to bird conservation, and is part of a team studying how pinyon jays use pinyon pine and juniper woodlands and other habitats.  

He talks about how pinyon jay groups cover huge areas, which means that you see them “so sporadically that, when you do see them, it’s just such a memorable experience.” He remembers radio-tracking pinyon jays and, at times, suddenly realizing he was in the presence of a big flock.  

“They’re all picking through crevices in the bark for caches (of pine nuts) or probing the ground for caches, and there’s one watching (as a sentry), and they’re rotating through these duties … and it’s really cool to be that close to so many birds,” Bohman says. 

He talks about the “cohesive structure” of the flock, how the birds are “very obviously communicating things to each other,” how you can see the different roles of individuals “play out in real time.” 

Listening to Ned talk enthusiastically about pinyon jays, I feel a bit like I’m hearing a version of myself, only with a deeper knowledge of the jays than I have. His description of being in the middle of a flock, in particular, feels exactly right. But what really strikes me is that almost everything he said about the jays could have been about humans. Large social groups covering huge areas. Cohesive structure. Obvious communication. Individuals rotating through duties. That is the jays, and that is us. 

Other details of the lives of pinyon jays add to the analogy. Most of the time, pinyon jays move around in flocks of less than 100, but at times, those groups fuse into much larger ones, just as, in some human societies, people mostly live in small bands but sometimes gather into much larger groups. A nesting pair of pinyon jays often will have “helpers at the nest,” the pair’s offspring from previous years, mirroring human families where older kids help raise younger ones. When young pinyon jays leave the nest, they immediately band together with the young from other nests, and several adults look after the whole group, like a mobile daycare center. And the pinyon jays in a flock apparently all know each other, with each bird recognizing its place in the group hierarchy—again, much like people (even those who don’t like hierarchies). 

I don’t want to push this analogy too far, but I think it’s safe to say that pinyon jays are more pervasively social than any other Nevada bird species. A flock of pinyon jays might seem just like any other group of birds, like gulls hanging out in a parking lot, or robins crowded into a tree to gobble up fruit. But there’s a real and critical difference: Flocks of gulls, robins and most other birds are just temporary gatherings that may not even last through the day, much less through many years. A pinyon jay flock is together, because togetherness, for them, is a way of life. 

Community scientists 

Every spring, hundreds of birdwatchers drive along predetermined 24.5-mile routes all over the U.S. and in parts of Canada, stopping each half-mile to count every bird they see or hear, making a total of 50 counting points per route. These volunteers—aka community (or citizen) scientists—are working for the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), a program jointly run by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service. BBS volunteers have been driving these routes since 1966, long enough to record major changes in bird populations, and long enough, as it turns out, to show an alarming trend in the total population of pinyon jays.

The most recent BBS report, covering 1966 through 2022, estimated that the overall number of pinyon jays fell by some 70 percent in that time. The estimate isn’t precise, but there is no doubt that the drop has been very large. John Boone, a GBBO biologist who has examined those results carefully, said the actual percentage could be “60, 70, 80,” but even the most optimistic number represents an enormous decline. Also, in the core parts of the species’ range, including much of Nevada, the dropoff has been especially pronounced. 

BBS reports, based on the efforts of thousands of community scientists, were a big part of what put pinyon jays on the radar of conservationists and agency land managers. And, according to John Boone and Ned Bohman, community scientists will also be a vital part of the next step in the conservation of this species. 

That next step is figuring out why pinyon jay populations are declining. At the moment, it’s a mystery. Pinyon jays rely heavily on the seeds of pinyon pines for food, so you might think the problem is just the loss of these trees—caused, for instance, by wildfires and government tree-removal projects. But pinyon-juniper woodlands have actually expanded in much of the pinyon jay’s range, so it can’t be as simple as that. John Boone and Ned Bohman think that climate change is part of the answer, possibly because drought and high temperature can stress trees and reduce the production of cones. They also think that the health of the woodlands, rather than their mere persistence, is a key. 

John and Ned also believe that more data is required on where the jays are, and what they’re doing, but obtaining that data will not be easy. As Diane Wong-Kone, executive director of the Lahontan Audubon Society (LAS) told me, you need more eyes out there looking and covering a large space, “because that’s what these birds do—they cover very large spaces.” 

This is where professional science again meets community science. In 2021, there was a meeting between GBBO scientists and Jennie Jones Scherbinski, then the executive director of the LAS. GBBO was already conducting pinyon jay projects and had the expertise for collecting and analyzing the relevant data, and the LAS had a membership full of people who liked to get outside and watch birds. 

The Pinyon Jay Community Science Project was born, with GBBO biologists training LAS volunteers to collect data on the location and behavior of the jays. That data will eventually be linked up with habitat and other variables to help understand how pinyon jays are using the landscape. Knowing where the jays are thriving, and where they’re not, is a step toward figuring out why they’re declining. Bohman called the project “the beautiful harmony of a science organization working with a community-based organization.” 

Unanswered questions 

It’s a January afternoon, and I’m up on Peavine with Lori Bellis and Diane Killeen, two of the nearly 50 LAS volunteers. It’s sunny and unseasonably warm, and even the ground feels welcoming—not muddy, but softer underfoot than usual. We’re talking about the project, but we’re also looking and listening for the jays. However, luck isn’t with us today. At one point, I see a distant flock, but they turn out to be pigeons. 

Lori and Diane had different motivations for joining the project. Lori hikes more than 1,000 miles a year, often through pinyon-juniper woodlands, and she thought she might as well look for the jays on her outings.  

“Anytime I can be looking for something while I’m hiking, I’m all about that,” she said.  

Diane lives right by the Peavine jays, and the jay project caught her attention, because she had often seen these birds in her backyard. Not many people around Reno are familiar with pinyon jays, but she knows them well. 

What Lori and Diane share is a curiosity about the jays that grows stronger the more they know. Lori talked about tree-removal projects done in Nevada and other states to improve habitats for another at-risk bird, the greater sage grouse, and whether these might be hurting pinyon jays. Diane wondered if pinyon jays, like the ones on Peavine, that live where there are few or no pinyon pines are adapting to use other pine species. Those are good questions without clear answers at the moment. 

The concern for pinyon jays is beginning to feel like a movement, and the people involved aren’t all looking at the jays themselves; some of them are focused on pinyon pines and the pinyon-juniper woodlands. For instance, Robin Eppard, an adjunct instructor at Western Nevada College, leads an intensive, week-long field course in which students evaluate the health of an especially productive stand of pinyon pine near Topaz Lake. And Rhiana Jones, the environmental director of the Washoe Tribe’s Environmental Protection Department, is part of an informal network of agency people and university researchers aimed at restoring pinyon pines and enhancing the pine nut harvest, which has great cultural significance for the tribe. She hopes the pinyon jay is placed on the endangered species list, in part, because that could lead to restoring pinyon-juniper woodlands. 

Community effort 

“It takes all of us working on this,” said Rose Strickland, the conservation chair for the LAS. “Problems are too pervasive; everything is connected, and so we need to be more connected in the way that we approach preserving biodiversity instead of just drawing lines on a map (around protected areas). … It really takes a village.” 

Will the village succeed? Strickland has been an outspoken environmental activist for decades, and she is perpetually hopeful. “Conservation for me has always been a finger in the dike. And that hasn’t changed,” she said. 

I try to be hopeful, too, but sometimes, I can’t shake off the elephant that’s now always in the room—namely, climate change. Even the most remote and seemingly safe populations of pinyon jays are disturbed by human impacts, because the whole planet is disturbed. I’m picturing a crowd of people with fingers jammed into the dike, and then the water rises too high and pours over the top—that’s the overwhelming effect of climate change. 

Maybe if the people stop up the holes for long enough, the waters will subside, although for that to happen, we’ll need the actions of a worldwide crowd. Think globally; act locally; make noise; and vote as if the planet depended on it, because it does. 

A few days after meeting with Lori Bellis and Diane Killeen, I was up on Peavine again. This time, a big flock of pinyon jays came through, and I followed them to the pines along a small canyon. Most of the jays were hidden in the trees, but small groups came down to forage, picking at the surface of the ground and probing into the soil, probably retrieving pine nuts cached last year. At one point, when I was moving around, many of the birds gave mechanical-sounding “rattle” calls, a sign of agitation used only by females, which they give when a person approaches, and also when a mate gets too close. 

Later, at home, I opened up the survey app on my laptop and entered the sighting. A “presence” report. 86 jays. Distance to the flock: zero. Direction to the flock: none.  

The “zero” and the “none” mean I was in the middle of the flock, the birds all around me. Reading between the lines, they also mean I was having a transcendent experience, communing with the jays. 

I added notes on the birds’ behavior and checked what I entered to make sure everything was correct. 

I hit the “submit” button—and I’m done. For now. 

Alan de Queiroz is a writer and biologist who lives in Reno with his partner, Tara, and their children, Hana and Eiji. He has a special fondness for birds, snakes, obscure insects called jumping bristletails, and the mountains of the Great Basin. His book The Monkey’s Voyage, about the impact of improbable ocean crossings by plants and animals on the history of life, was listed as one of the best science books of 2014 by Amazon.com and was an editor’s choice in The New York Times.