Illustration © David Allen Sibley.
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Text © Kenn Kaufman, adapted from
Lives of North American Birds
Photo: Glenn Bartley/Vireo
Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus
Conservation status | Local numbers may change drastically from year to year, making it difficult to track the overall population, but surveys indicate general declines in recent decades. |
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Family | Crows, Magpies, Jays |
Habitat | Pinyon pines, junipers; ranges into sagebrush. Under normal conditions, seldom found far from pinyon pines in pinyon-juniper woods. At times, perhaps when the pinyon cone crop fails, flocks are seen elsewhere in streamside groves, oak woods, or other habitats. |
Does much foraging on ground, also feeds in trees, and occasionally flies out to catch insects in the air. Almost always forages in flocks. Stores many pine seeds in late summer and fall, burying caches in ground, and is able to find them and feed on them later.
4-5, sometimes 3-6. Very pale blue-green to grayish, finely dotted with brown. Incubation is by female, about 16-17 days. Male feeds female during incubation. Young: Both parents bring food for nestlings. Young leave nest about 3 weeks after hatching.
Both parents bring food for nestlings. Young leave nest about 3 weeks after hatching.
Omnivorous, but especially pinyon pine seeds. Feeds heavily on seeds of pinyon pine; also eats seeds of other pines and many other plants, berries, small fruits, nuts, waste grain. Especially in summer, eats many insects, including beetles, caterpillars, and grasshoppers, also sometimes eggs and young of smaller birds. Young are fed mostly insects.
Nests in colonies, close together but usually no more than 1-3 nests in any one tree. Breeds mostly in late winter, the adults feeding largely on stored seeds; may nest again in late summer if pinyon pines produce an exceptional seed crop. In courtship, several males may pursue one female in flight. Nest site is usually 3-20' above the ground in juniper, oak, or pinyon, sometimes much higher in other kind of pine. Nest (built by both sexes) has foundation of twigs, inner cup made of shredded bark, grass, rootlets, pine needles, animal hair. Often steals material from unattended nests of neighbors.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
The government says uprooting piñon-juniper forest with heavy chains improves public lands in the West, but the science is sketchy.
In just a decade, three quarters of birds vanished after drought, heat stress, and beetles killed millions of piñon trees in the southwest.
With the review process for 27 of our national monuments officially closed, a letter from Audubon's president and CEO.
Two-thirds of North American bird species are at risk of extinction from climate change. Urge Congress to act now.
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