Abstract
Gray jays ( Perisoreus canadensis) typically store food boli in various sites on conifers. In a laboratory setting we determined whether gray jays recover stored boli by means of olfaction, trial-and-error search or spatial memory. Using an artificial tree with 52 possible caching sites, caching and/or recovery trials were performed with five captive gray jays for the following experiments: (1) no extra visual cues on tree; (2) extra visual cues (pine foliage) attached to tree; (3) pungent-smelling food hidden by observer; (4) one bird allowed to cache food but caches recovered by a second bird; (5) one bird allowed to observe another bird cache food and later permitted to recover those caches. Results supported the memory hypothesis, but cache site preferences were apparent for individual birds. To control for this, an additional experiment (6), in which cache site access was limited by the investigators, was conducted with two new birds. These results also indicated that gray jays use spatial memory to recover stored boli.
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