Canada jay
The Canada jay is a passerine bird of the family Corvidae. It is found in boreal forests of North America north to the tree line. The species is associated with mythological figures of several First Nations cultures. It has nine recognized subspecies, with two additional subspecies formerly recognized: The grey jay and the black jay.
About Canada jay in brief
The Canada jay is a passerine bird of the family Corvidae. It is found in boreal forests of North America north to the tree line. Canada jays live year-round on permanent territories in coniferous forests. The species is associated with mythological figures of several First Nations cultures. In 2016, an online poll and expert panel conducted by Canadian Geographic magazine selected it as the national bird of Canada, although the designation is not formally recognized. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers it a least-concern species, however, populations in southern ranges may be affected adversely by global warming. It has nine recognized subspecies, with two additional subspecies formerly recognized: The grey jay and the black jay. A typical adult is 25cm to 33cm long, though it can reach up to 40cm in length. It lives in the boreal and subalpine forests of northern North America, and in the Rocky Mountains sub alpine zone south to New Mexico and Arizona. The birds form monogamous mating pairs, with pairs accompanied on their territories by a third juvenile from the previous season. They are known to approach humans for food, inspiring a list of colloquial names including “lumberjack”, “camp robber”, and “venison-hawk”. It is one of three members of the genus Perisoreus, a genus more closely related to the magpie genus Cyanopica than to other birds known as jays. Its relatives are native to Eurasia, and ancestors are thought to have diverged from their Old World relatives and crossed Beringia into North America.
A 2012 genetic study revealed four clades across its range: a widespread “boreal” or “taiga” clade ranging from Alaska to Newfoundland and ranging south to the Black Hills of South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah in the west and New England in the east. The Pacific clade is milder and recolonized the region in warmer times, suggesting that it retreated to multiple areas of climate during previous ice ages. In 2018 the common name was changed from grey jays to Canada jAY by the American Ornithological Society in a supplement to their supplement to the world-list of North American Birds. Two additional sub species were formerly recognized, including the black and gray jay, but they are no longer listed by the Ornithologists’ Union. The Canadian jay has a grey-white head with a darker grey nape, and a pale grey underparts and darker grey upperparts. It can grow up to 25cm long and is a relatively large songbird, though smaller than other jays, with a typical adult size between 25cm and 33cm in height. It was first described in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Canada. In 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.
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This page is based on the article Canada jay published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
