Indian plum fruits feed Steller's jays
June 25, 2026
The Steller's jays are loud this morning in San Juan County. You can hear them before you see them, a hard rasping call from somewhere in the understory, and when you find one, it is usually in an Indian plum, working the branches with its bill. The Indian plum has been fruiting for a few weeks now, and the drupes have moved from green to yellow to a dark, waxy blue-black. The jays know exactly when that shift happens. Indian plum is one of the earliest shrubs to do anything in this forest. It leafs out in late winter, flowers before almost anything else, and by early summer it carries ripe fruit while the bigleaf maples and vine maples around it are still only producing leaves. That early timing matters here. The drupes are small, about the size of a blueberry, and they contain a hard pit surrounded by thin flesh. They are mildly bitter, not the kind of fruit that appeals to every bird, but Steller's jays take them readily. A jay will land on a fruiting branch, grip a drupe in its bill, and swallow it whole. The pit passes through intact. This is how Indian plum moves through the forest, carried by birds and deposited wherever the jay travels next. For the jays, early summer is the most demanding stretch of the year. They are nesting now, and the nestlings require protein, which means the adults are hunting insects steadily, catching beetles and caterpillars and anything else they can find in the canopy. But the adults also need to sustain themselves through long foraging days, and the Indian plum drupes give them a reliable, calorie-dense food source that requires very little effort to find. The shrubs are large and heavily fruited right now, and a jay can harvest a significant amount in a short time. Watch one work through a single branch: it moves methodically, taking drupes in sequence, pausing occasionally to scan, then moving on. The oceanspray nearby is just opening its flowers, drawing insects, and the jay will sometimes drop from the Indian plum to snap something out of the air before returning. The two food sources, fruit and insects, are available within a few meters of each other at the same time, and the jays use both. Steller's jays are also known to cache food, pressing items into bark crevices or burying them under duff. Whether they cache Indian plum drupes the way they cache acorns is less clear, but their habit of moving fruit away from the parent shrub is ecologically significant regardless. Indian plum tends to grow in the shrubby edges of Douglas fir and bigleaf maple forest, in the gaps and margins where light reaches the ground. Jays move between those margins and the denser interior, and seeds deposited in either place have a chance to germinate. Over time this matters for how the shrub distributes itself across the landscape. The Steller's jay is not a bird that sits quietly. Its calls carry through the forest, and it frequently mimics the calls of red-tailed hawks, a behavior that has been observed to flush other birds from feeding areas. Whether that is the intent is hard to say, but the effect is real. This is a bird that is paying attention to everything around it, and right now what it is paying attention to is the Indian plum. If you are near any shrubby forest edge in the islands today, look for the dark blue crest moving through the outer branches of a fruiting shrub, and listen for that rasping call between the quieter sounds of the understory.
Rufous hummingbirds find orange honeysuckle in early summer
June 4, 2026
The longest light of the year stretches across San Juan Island, where salt air carries the first warmth of true summer. In the understory beneath Douglas fir and along the edges of open meadows, orange honeysuckle vines have begun their brief flowering season. The tubular orange blooms hang in clusters, each flower curved and deep, built for a very particular visitor. A rufous hummingbird hovers at the honeysuckle's throat, its copper back catching the filtered sunlight. The bird extends its needle-thin bill deep into the flower's tube, reaching for nectar that pools at the base. Orange honeysuckle flowers are perfectly calibrated to this partnership. Their orange color matches the wavelength that hummingbirds see most clearly, and their tubular shape excludes most other nectar seekers. The flower's stamens brush pollen onto the bird's forehead as it feeds, then the bird carries that pollen to the next bloom, sometimes on the same vine, sometimes to another honeysuckle a quarter mile away. This encounter happens during a narrow window. Rufous hummingbirds arrive in the Pacific Northwest in late spring, the males claiming territories first, followed by females who build their tiny cup nests in the protective branches of Douglas fir or salal. Orange honeysuckle times its flowering to coincide with this arrival, offering concentrated energy when the birds need it most. A single flower produces nectar for only a few days, but the vine staggers its blooms across several weeks, ensuring a steady supply through the hummingbirds' peak nesting period. The bird visits dozens of flowers each day, supplementing the nectar with small insects it catches on the wing. Gnats and aphids provide the protein necessary for growing chicks, while the honeysuckle's sugar fuels the constant motion required to hover and defend territory. The partnership extends beyond simple feeding. Orange honeysuckle depends almost entirely on hummingbirds for pollination. The flower's deep corolla tube excludes bees, and its downward-facing opening makes it difficult for most other visitors to reach the nectar. When the rufous hummingbird moves between flowers, it transfers pollen with remarkable efficiency. The vine's reproductive success rises and falls with the hummingbird's presence, while the bird's breeding success depends partly on the honeysuckle's nectar production. By midsummer, the honeysuckle will set its bright red berries, and the hummingbirds will begin their southward journey, but for now, in these longest days, both species find exactly what they need in each other. Somewhere in the canopy above, a rufous hummingbird's wings beat fifty times per second, creating that familiar hum that gives the family its name. The sound carries through the still air between Douglas fir trunks, a reminder that even in apparent stillness, the forest pulses with precisely calibrated exchanges of energy.
Barred owls fledging young across the San Juan Islands
July 13, 2026
Barred owls have moved into the San Juan Islands and are now raising young here — fledglings confirmed as recently as early July, with fifteen sightings recorded across Orcas, Lopez, San Juan, Guemes, and Anacortes over the past six months. These are eastern birds, expanding westward across the continent for decades, and their arrival marks a turning point in the archipelago's woodland ecology. Barred owls aggressively claim nest cavities from northern spotted owls and readily interbreed with them, creating hybrid young that further dilute the spotted owl's genetic integrity. Island by island, year by year, the displacement is measurable and still advancing. Where barred owls establish, spotted owls retreat — not in a season, but in a steady, documented erosion of territory that echoes across the region.
