900 Acres, Zero Spotted Pinyon Jays: Cover-Up?

From our Investigative Desk

Nine hundred acres. Thousands of solar panels. A full wildlife survey.

And not one Spotted Pinyon Jay.

Not a feather. Not a call. Not a single subtle spot.

To our Investigative Desk, zero is the most suspicious number in Four Corners ornithology. When a survey of 900 acres turns up exactly zero of a bird, there are only two possible explanations.

Either the bird is not there.

Or someone wants you to think it is not there.

The Documents

Our team obtained documents related to an unnamed solar project somewhere in the general vicinity of the Colorado Plateau. We are not at liberty to say how we obtained them. (They were on a public website.)

They include maps, soil reports and a wildlife section listing dozens of species observed doing ordinary bird things in plain view.

The Spotted Pinyon Jay appears nowhere.

Not in the tables. Not in the appendices. Not even in the footnotes, where the truth goes to hide.

"That's what got me," said our Director of Unconfirmed Ornithology. "They mention a lizard. A lizard. But nothing about a bird discussed at four community meetings and one very long online thread."

The Timeline

Our reporters reconstructed this timeline from the documents, interviews and a whiteboard nobody has erased since spring.

• Day 1: Survey crews arrive on site. Spotted Pinyon Jays observed: 0.

• Day 3: Survey crews walk transects across the property. Spotted Pinyon Jays observed: 0.

• Day 7: A crew member reportedly hears "a jay-like noise." It is later identified as a gate.

• Day 12: Final survey walk. Spotted Pinyon Jays observed: 0.

• Day 13: Report completed. Spotted Pinyon Jay mentioned: 0 times.

• Day 14: A resident who asked not to be identified reports seeing "something bluish" near the property line, at dusk, from a moving vehicle.

Every official count is zero. Every unofficial account is compelling. Our analysts call this "the Gap." Critics call it "the evidence."

A Source Close to the Survey

We spoke with a source close to the survey, who agreed to talk if we described them only as "a person who has been near a clipboard."

"Look," the source said, "we walked the whole site. We had binoculars. We had the field guides. Nobody told us to look for a Spotted Pinyon Jay."

When asked whether they would have found one if they had been told, the source paused for a long time.

"Probably not," they said. "But we would have looked harder at not finding it."

This is, in our view, the heart of the matter.

The Unanswered Questions

Our Coordinator of Public Comment compiled these questions and submitted them through every available channel. We are still waiting. We have always been still waiting.

1. Why did the survey not include the one bird that is never in surveys?

2. If the bird was not there, where did it go? And when? And was it asked?

3. Is it a coincidence that the bird was absent on every single day the surveyors were present?

4. Who decided that "not observed" means "not present"? Was it a scientist? Or was it simply logic?

5. What is the gate hiding?

Our Chief of Avian Uncertainty has reached a firm, carefully worded conclusion.

"We cannot prove the Spotted Pinyon Jay was on those 900 acres," she said. "But we also cannot prove it wasn't. And until somebody conducts a survey specifically designed to find nothing, and finds nothing more thoroughly, we will continue to have concerns."

We are not accusing anyone of anything. We are simply raising questions, loudly, in a font size designed to be noticed.

If you have information, please use our Report a Sighting form. Share only a general area. Please do not bring the gate.

The real Pinyon Jay is a social, seed-caching jay of the interior West whose numbers have declined. Good siting and habitat surveys matter for birds that do, in fact, show up.

The Spotted Pinyon Jay is fictional. This post is satire. The real Pinyon Jay is not.