Joan and the latest fashion statement

Reaching the intersection with the Red Root Trail, I have a hunch. “Let’s turn here.” We walk up the little-used cross trail, and within moments, scrub-jays appear all around us—two, four, eight. Most perch on the slender oak branches, *bleep*ing their heads like parrots, sizing us up. Several scramble through the bushes, intent on finding more acorns. As I pull out my camera, I discover that they’re too close for the telephoto lens. I put on a macro lens, and as I lift the camera up to take a picture, a scrub-jay lands on it, fussing.

“Look at this!” Joan laughs. A scrub-jay landed on her perfect coiffure. “Guess I should have worn a hat!” The birds are unexpectedly large, eight inches tall, and so bright and colorful it’s like having a flock of parrots surrounding you.

Within moments, another scrub-jay is on my hat, picking at the button in the middle, assuming it’s an acorn cap. I’m about to shake my head to encourage it to fly away when we hear a shrill shrweep from the bushes. At the sentinel’s warning, all of the scrub-jays melt back into the scrub, shuffling across the forest floor in search of acorns, insects, and lizards. During the acorn season, each family will gather a cache of acorns, as squirrels do, to feed themselves during the leaner times.

We retrace our steps back to the outside of the loop. Further along, at the intersection of Red Root Trail and the Rusty Lyonia Trail, another friendly family of scrub-jays comes out of the bushes. Some of them hop across the bright white sand path. Others rustle in the brush, turning over leaves, looking for insects. A few land on our heads, then settle back in the oak branches. Since we’re so close to the beginning of the trail at the Deltona Library, it makes me wonder if these birds are habituated to human presence—and if someone has been feeding them. Sure enough, as Joan and I make our way back to the trailhead, we pass a family with a bag of peanuts.

While feeding encourages the bird’s bolder actions, the Florida scrub-jay has a natural curiosity about its surroundings, and will come out of the forest to investigate. At the Archbold Biological Station on Lake Wales Ridge, scientists studying the Florida scrub-jay do hand-feed them on occasion to make it easier to examine and band the birds. During the breeding season, March through May, the scrub-jays tend to keep to themselves, so Sleister has coaxed reluctant birds out of the woods with a few unsalted peanuts. But in general, feeding the birds is a bad idea. Sleister discourages visitors to Lyonia Preserve from feeding the scrub-jays. “It gives them a false sense of the carrying capacity of the land, and people feed them things that a scrub-jay simply shouldn’t eat,” like the birdseed I saw one young couple handing out on a recent morning.