Amanda Hagood
Even before reading Mark Jerome Walters’s “Florida Scrub-Jay: Field Notes on a Vanishing Bird” (University Press of Florida, 2021), my Florida bucket list was well developed. I wanted to find a mastodon bone in Wakulla Springs, spot a Florida panther in Big Cypress, and wave to a manatee at Crystal River. But now, I have a goal that tops them all: I want a Florida scrub jay to land on my head.
This isn’t so far-fetched. As Walters explains, these boisterous Florida jays, whose home habitat is the high-and-dry scrub that once abounded in Florida, live in small family groups that patrol a particular patch of scrub. When curious humans come for a visit, a family’s appointed watch bird, the “sentinel,” will flit up to the highest vantage point – sometimes a hiker’s head – for a good look around. Where else but Florida, right?
But, as Walters relates, it’s increasingly difficult to find scrub jays – despite the fact that they are the state’s only endemic bird. The book follows his not-always-successful quest to observe these plucky passerines in their remaining strongholds across Florida, to Kennedy Space Center, Oscar Scherer State Park, Archbold Biological Station, and Ocala National Forest. The spreading footprint of Florida’s humans, coupled with the loss of periodic wildfires that once kept the scrub in open, optimal condition for jays, has driven a 90% decline in their population over the last century.
A journalist with a veterinary medicine background, Walters has written two previous books about endangered bird species, and one of the joys of “Florida Scrub-Jay” is his ability to translate conservation science into terms most readers can understand. He gives voice to some remarkable scientists and advocates fighting the front lines to preserve the remnants of Florida’s unique scrub ecosystem, and scrub jays along with it. As they lead us through the wild lands, sometimes finding their bird and sometimes not, they share perspectives both poignant and insightful.
Having seen regular burning for the first time in almost half a century, the scrub – hidden in the roots and seeds beneath the sand – still remembered what it was.
Though some may find the structure of the narrative a bit repetitive – visit site, introduce experts, do some birdwatching, repeat – the author nevertheless vividly paints the places he visits, evoking all of the beauty, strangeness, and poignancy of a disappearing landscape. Describing a controlled-burn habitat restoration in part of Oscar Scherer State Park, he writes: “Having seen regular burning for the first time in almost half a century, the scrub – hidden in the roots and seeds beneath the sand – still remembered what it was. And that is what it slowly and surely became again.”
This moment, and many others in “Florida Scrub-Jay”, helps us visualize both the ecological loss sweeping our state, and the future only possible with the right kind of care and intervention.
In the end, I must admit, that’s even better than a bird perching on my head.
