- Three, two, one, go.
Just let that hand go.
Yep, you're okay, you're okay.
- I'm okay.
[green jay squawking]
- And there he goes.
- WOMAN: He gave you a little goodbye kiss.
- Oooohhhh!
- You did it. - Thank you Tony!
What an awesome experience!
- Yeah, of course.
- What an awesome experience!
- NARRATOR: Alicia Cavazos has just released
a green jay back into the wild.
Just 20 minutes earlier, this bird was captured
in her backyard as part of new study
taking place in South Texas.
[green jay squawking]
- Now that's good.
Means he's feisty, means he's alert.
That's what we want to see.
We're looking at the home range of green jays
in urban areas to determine if they're kind of staying
in certain backyards, or if they're moving around.
We just don't know a lot about what they're doing
in urban areas.
- NARRATOR: The green jay occurs from South America,
north to Texas.
In North and Central America, the bird's range
extends from Honduras north through Mexico,
and into the brushlands of South Texas.
- STUDENT: Look, look, look.
There's like eight of them.
- We don't know a lot about green jays, first of all,
so it's important to know what they're doing,
if we want to be able to manage for them,
and we want to manage for them because we have a lot
of birdwatchers that come into the Valley
and one of the species that they really want to see
are green jays.
- FEMALE STUDENT: Oh yeah, it looks hungry.
- MALE STUDENT: It's just cool.
A lot of them are camouflaged, or blending in,
but that one really pops out.
- TONY: The Rio Grande Valley is, I think,
the third fastest growing urban area in the country.
It's expanding at a rapid rate.
A lot of urbanization, a lot of habitat change is going on,
and so these birds have been able to adapt
to a certain extent.
- NARRATOR: In order to understand how green jays
are adapting to the rapidly changing environment
of The Valley, Tony plans to trap,
tag and track up to 10 birds a year.
- DONNA: Well, Tony brought this cage to me about
a week and a half ago
and had me set it up here under the shade.
- NARRATOR: Donna McCowan's yard in Harlingen
is a paradise for birds of all kinds.
- With the cage door open, we were putting corn
and peanuts in it, so the birds would get used to it
and just assume it's supposed to be there
and they had no problem with getting in and out of it.
This morning, we're going close the top of it
and watch and wait for the birds to show up.
- Usually, what I find is it takes one bird
to be in the trap, and then once that happens
all the other birds are like, oh I can just go right in.
- Ah, okay.
There's one.
He's going, "Wait a minute, this is how I got in before."
[laughs]
- TONY: We're setting the traps up in areas
where we know that green jays occur.
Okay, those peanuts should be pretty irresistible.
So, now we're waiting around for them to figure out,
"Okay, this is where the food is and that's how I get to it,"
and then they should just walk into the trap
to get the food.
Almost.
- DONNA: That's where I went a while ago on--
- TONY: Other side.
They are a jay, so they are a smart, intelligent bird.
And inquisitive.
You watch them and they're jumping around,
they're looking at different things,
they're investigating stuff and they're fun to watch.
- DONNA: Says, "No, not yet."
- TONY: We've got doves, we've got grackles.
We've had a rabbit going in.
So far today, we haven't had a ton of luck.
But, we're hopeful.
Hey Alicia, we're going to head over to your place now okay,
so get ready, we're coming.
- NARRATOR: After an hour of waiting without much success,
Tony decides it's time to check on another trap
he has set up about 15 miles down the road in San Benito.
- The green jays come to my yard all the time,
so I offered my house to Parks and Wildlife
so they can do this study.
And I'm just so excited, because I love the green jays,
as you can see.
I'm wearing my lucky green jay shirt. [laughs]
- TONY: We had some green jays coming in, investigating it,
but they didn't go in yet.
A couple of minutes ago, Donna McCowan,
whose house we were at earlier, just let me know
that she did get a green jay in her trap.
- I finally caught the green jay.
[tires screech]
- So, we're going to head over there now
and process that bird.
[light, fun music]
This is typical urban ecology.
You're bopping between places pretty frequently
trying to get to the animals you need to get to
as fast as possible.
Alright, so, we got the bird in the trap.
It went in.
And we're just going to reach through the top and grab it.
There you go.
Alright.
So there's our bird.
We'll put a color band on the bird
and we'll put a silver band on the bird.
If we see the bird running around, we can at least look
at the leg and say, "Okay, it has a color band on it
and I know what individual bird that is."
This is on the left leg.
We'll take a wing measurement.
116.
- 116 for wing cord? - Yeah.
- TONY: A tail measurement, 132.
- SARA: 132.
- If it weighs a certain amount.
That's, 91.
We'll put a radio transmitter on the back,
and that will help us observe them as well.
So we're going to put it right about there.
The radio's going to fall off before the radio dies,
and that's good.
We get our data that we need, the transmitter falls off,
and the bird goes about its life as normal.
So Donna, the way you are going to release it,
is you are going to put two fingers over the head like this.
I think initially it thought, "Oh no, this is it,
this is how I get eaten."
And, you know, after it doesn't get eaten right away,
it probably is just thinking, "How do I escape?"
And we're going to let him go pretty much
into this tree right here.
- Okay.
- And I'm sure they'll give you a countdown, oh!
- I'm sorry.
He was ready to go.
I'm sorry.
- He's right here.
He's picking at his bands.
Those are new things so he's trying to figure out
what they are, are they going to stay there
or do I get rid of them?
[green jay squawking]
Got to go back to Alicia's house, she got a bird
as we were on our way here, so now we're going to go there
and transmitter that bird.
[light, fun music]
They are adaptable.
That's one of the reasons why we find them in urban areas,
but we don't really know what they are doing
to be able to adapt.
Is it their diet?
Are they able to adapt to different kinds of plants
that they normally wouldn't use?
The hope of this project, the goal, is to come up
with some habitat recommendations that we can go
to landowners and say "Listen, green jays are in the area,
"we all like green jays.
"They're colorful birds, they're cool birds.
"All you need to do is X, Y and Z
and you'll get green jays in your yard."
And that is the ultimate goal, to increase habitat
for green jays, because in doing so,
we'll also help every other bird species
we have in The Valley out.
And that's always a good thing.
[green jay squawking]
And there he goes.
[light, fun music]
You did it.
- ALICIA: Thank you Tony!
[green jay calling]
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Wildlife Restoration Program.