Search Image Formation in the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)

Search Image Formation in the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata).

Blue jays trained to detect Catocala moths in slides were exposed to two types of slide series containing these moths: series of one species and series of two species intermixed. In one-species series, detection ability increased with successive encounters with one prey type. No similar effect occurred in two-species series. These results are a direct demonstration of a specific search image.

Microhabitat Factors Influencing Predation and Success of Suburban Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata Nests

Blue jays, Cyanocitta cristata, devalue social information in uncertain environments

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.11.015 0003-3472/© 2015 The Association for the Study of A Animals are selective about when to learn by observing others. Models predict that social information becomes less reliable in uncertain environments, and therefore animals should reduce their use of social information in these environments; however, these parameters are often difficult to manipu...

Visual Detection of Cryptic Prey by Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata).

Blue jays learned to respond differentially to the presence or absence of Catocala moths in slides. This detection of the moths by the jays was affected by the background upon which the moth was placed and its body orientation, thus providing an objective measure of crypticity. These procedures are useful for the study of visual detection of prey.

Visual search and attention in blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata): Associative cuing and sequential priming.

Visual search for complex natural targets requires focal attention, either cued by predictive stimulus associations or primed by a representation of the most recently detected target. Because both processes can focus visual attention, cuing and priming were compared in an operant search task to evaluate their relative impacts on performance and to determine the nature of their interaction in co...