Scrub-jay in a scrub live oak

I arrive on a cool, misty January morning at Brevard County’s Malabar Scrub Sanctuary, not far from the Indian River Lagoon. A damp chill saturates the air. I’d corresponded with the land manager, Zach Prusak, over several months, and he assured me that early morning was the best time to find their elusive scrub-jay population. As my friend Rich Evans and I slowly walk the sugar sand trails, the calls of birds echo between the sand live oaks—the persistent weep-weep of the eastern towhee and the wheezy fip-fip-fip of the blue-gray gnatcatcher. We turn off the Scrub Jay Trail to follow the Oak Leaf Trail into the scrubby flatwoods. In a transition zone between habitats, a boardwalk stretches over a tannic wetland. Here, perched in the oaks, two scrub-jays fuss at each other. It’s too early, the light too faint to highlight their brilliant blue feathers. Only their calls and their size give them away.

After a couple hours of hiking, we meet up with Zach Prusak to talk about this preserve, officially opening in April 2002. It’s obvious from the main entrance road that this was meant to be yet another housing development, increasing the southward sprawl of Palm Bay. “We were fortunate to get this property at a bankruptcy proceeding,” said Prusak. We discuss the surrounding neighborhoods, the push of the urban mass out to Malabar. “The neighborhood cats are likely to blame for the decline of our scrub-jay population,” said Prusak. “We had ten individuals when we took over the property, and now there are three. There is a bobcat living on site, but the cats that wander in from the surrounding houses—their owners don’t realize the damage they can do.”

Malabar Scrub Sanctuary is yet another piece in a patchwork puzzle of lands with restoration efforts to preserve the Florida scrub-jay. Three regions of Florida contain the majority of the bird’s population—the Big Scrub of the Ocala National Forest, the Lake Wales Ridge, and the coastal scrub of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Florida scrub-jay habitat restoration efforts typically focus on land where scrub jays have been sighted in the past. According to Laura Lowery, Wildlife Biologist with the Ocala National Forest, “The longest distance a scrub-jay has been proven to move is nine miles, and they don’t like to move more than two miles.”