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For the very first time, researchers have actually observed the wild hybrid offspring of a blue jay and a green jay throughout a research study near San Antonio, Texas.
The hybrid bird is the item of 2 types whose environment varieties started to overlap a couple of years earlier, according to a research study released Sept. 10 in the journal Ecology and Evolution
Blue jays (Cyanocitta cristataand green jays (Cyanocorax yncasare both kinds of corvids, a household of birds that likewise consists of crows and ravens. Regardless of their comparable names, blue jays and green jays aren’t extremely carefully associated. They do not share a genus, and their family trees divided about 7 million years earlier.
Green jays have actually traditionally resided in warm, tropical locations of Mexico, Central America and southern Texas, while blue jays can be discovered throughout much of the eastern U.S. as far west as Houston. Over the last a number of years, warming temperature levels have actually allowed green jays to broaden their variety further north, while both environment modification and human advancements have actually pressed blue jays further west. The 2 types now exist together in part of Texas near San Antonio.
Stokes, who studies green jays at UT Austin, discovered the hybrid jay through social networks in 2023. A birder from the San Antonio location had actually published a picture of the uncommon bird from her yard, and she welcomed Stokes to her home to observe the bird more carefully over 2 days.
“The first day, we tried to catch it, but it was really uncooperative,” Stokes stated. “But the second day, we got lucky.”
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Stokes handled to capture the jay in a mist web– a thin mesh suspended in between 2 poles that’s difficult for birds to see. The bird had blue plumage however comparable facial markings to green jays, and it might produce calls of both types. Stokes took a blood sample from the bird and put a band on its leg to assist recognize it in the future, then launched it back into the wild.
A hereditary analysis of the blood sample revealed that the bird was most likely the offspring of a female green jay and a male blue jay. The hybrid bird is the very first recognized crossing of these 2 types in the wild, however in the 1970s, researchers reproduced a green jay and a blue jay in captivity. The wild hybrid’s look resembles the taxidermied captive-bred bird, which is now part of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History’s collections.
Regardless of this being the very first reported sighting of a hybrid of the 2 types, the jay was at least a years of age when Stokes tagged it. Over the next 2 years, nobody else reported finding the jay, however it went back to the very same San Antonio-area yard in June 2025.
If there are other hybrid jays, they may be hard to find– beyond San Antonio, couple of individuals reside in the area where the 2 types overlap, so the chances of somebody finding a hybrid are low.
“Hybridization is probably way more common in the natural world than researchers know about because there’s just so much inability to report these things happening,” Stokes stated.
Skyler Ware is a freelance science reporter covering chemistry, biology, paleontology and Earth science. She was a 2023 AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow at Science News. Her work has actually likewise appeared in Science News Explores, ZME Science and Chembites, to name a few. Skyler has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech.
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