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So What Should We Call This – a Grue Jay?
University of Texas Austin ^ | September 28, 2025 | Marc Airhart

Posted on 09/30/2025 5:36:50 AM PDT by Red Badger

The rare hybrid offspring of a blue jay and a green jay is likely a result of weather-related shifts in the range of two species.

A rare hybrid bird identified in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas (center panel, credit: Brian Stokes) is the result of mating between a male blue jay (left, credit: Travis Maher/Cornell Lab of Ornithology/Macaulay Library) and a female green jay (right, credit: Dan O’Brien/Cornell Lab of Ornithology/Macaulay Library).

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Biologists at The University of Texas at Austin, who have reported discovering a bird that’s the natural result of a green jay and a blue jay’s mating, say it may be among the first examples of a hybrid animal that exists because of recent changing patterns in the climate. The two different parent species are separated by 7 million years of evolution, and their ranges didn’t overlap as recently as a few decades ago.

“We think it’s the first observed vertebrate that’s hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change,” said Brian Stokes, a graduate student in ecology, evolution and behavior at UT and first author of the study.

Stokes noted that past vertebrate hybrids have resulted from human activity, like the introduction of invasive species, or the recent expansion of one species’ range into another’s – think polar bears and grizzlies – but this case appears to have occurred when shifts in weather patterns spurred the expansion of both parent species.

In the 1950s, the ranges of green jays, a tropical bird found across Central America, extended just barely up from Mexico into south Texas and the range of blue jays, a temperate bird living all across the Eastern U.S., only extended about as far west as Houston. They almost never came into contact with each other. But since then, as green jays have pushed north and blue jays have pushed west, their ranges have converged around San Antonio.

Green Jay and Blue Jay occurrences in Texas reported from 2000 to 2023 in eBird, a popular app for birders and citizen scientists to share their observations. Green points represent green jay occurrences, blue points denote blue jay occurrences and black points indicate localities of recorded co-occurrence. Credit: Brian Stokes.

As a Ph.D. candidate studying green jays in Texas, Stokes was in the habit of monitoring several social media sites where birders share photos of their sightings. It was one of several ways he located birds to trap, take blood samples for genetic analysis and release unharmed back to the wild. One day, he saw a grainy photo of an odd-looking blue bird with a black mask and white chest posted by a woman in a suburb northeast of San Antonio. It was vaguely like a blue jay, but clearly different. The backyard birder invited Stokes to her house to see it firsthand.

“The first day, we tried to catch it, but it was really uncooperative,” Stokes said. “But the second day, we got lucky.”

The bird got tangled in a mist net, basically a long rectangular mesh of black nylon threads stretched between two poles that is easy for a flying bird to overlook as it’s soaring through the air, focused on some destination beyond. Stokes caught and released dozens of other birds, before his quarry finally blundered into his net on the second day.

Stokes took a quick blood sample of this strange bird, banded its leg to help relocate it in the future, and then let it go. Interestingly, the bird disappeared for a few years and then returned to the woman’s yard in June 2025. It’s not clear what was so special about her yard.

“I don’t know what it was, but it was kind of like random happenstance,” he said. “If it had gone two houses down, probably it would have never been reported anywhere.”

According to an analysis by Stokes and his faculty advisor, integrative biology professor Tim Keitt, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the bird is a male hybrid offspring of a green jay mother and a blue jay father. That makes it like another hybrid that researchers in the 1970s brought into being by crossing a green jay and a blue jay in captivity. That taxidermically preserved bird looks much like the one Stokes and Keitt describe and is in the collections of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

“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 said. “And it’s probably possible in a lot of species that we just don’t see because they’re physically separated from one another and so they don’t get the chance to try to mate.”

The scientists’ work was supported by a ConTex Collaborative Research Grant through UT System, the Texas EcoLab Program and Planet Texas 2050, a University of Texas at Austin grand challenge initiative.

The researchers did not opt to name the hybrid bird, but other naturally occurring hybrids have received nicknames like “grolar bear” for the polar bear-grizzly hybrid, “coywolf” for a creature that’s part coyote and part wolf and “narluga” for an animal with both narwhal and beluga whale parents.

To download high resolution images, visit: https://utexas.box.com/s/qt9irnnur7vk9c9qcwzyfrxmyxdgii3d


TOPICS: Outdoors; Pets/Animals; Science; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: bird; prettybird; texas; wildlife
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LOVE WILL FIND A WAY.........................
1 posted on 09/30/2025 5:36:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

Blue Jays are real dicks.


2 posted on 09/30/2025 5:39:34 AM PDT by Lazamataz (I figure if Charlie Kirk can die for free speech, I can be mildly inconvenienced.)
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To: Lazamataz

Yes, they are. Don’t know about Green Jays, though..............


3 posted on 09/30/2025 5:40:29 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Red Badger

Just don’t let it go to public schools and read stories to children.


4 posted on 09/30/2025 5:40:33 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Democrats seek power through cheating and assassination. They are sociopaths. They just want power.)
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To: Red Badger

It can’t be a Grue unless it lurks in dark places and eats adventurers...


5 posted on 09/30/2025 5:42:14 AM PDT by vikingd00d (chown -R us ~you/base)
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To: Red Badger

Climate change hoax still being pushed.


6 posted on 09/30/2025 5:46:03 AM PDT by one guy in new jersey
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To: Red Badger

Blue jays are great parents. Every year, after their brood has left the nest, you see the parents with almost bald heads because they’ve lost their head feathers from feather mites in the nest. To me, that’s the sign of a loyal and faithful parent.

We have a flock that descend on peanuts when I throw them out. Always a joy to see.


7 posted on 09/30/2025 5:50:58 AM PDT by mairdie
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To: Lazamataz

They serve a purpose when a predator is spotted. All birds know the blue jay alarm call. Once the element of surprise is gone the snake, cat, hawk’s game is over.


8 posted on 09/30/2025 5:51:52 AM PDT by Wilderness Conservative (Nature is the ultimate conservative)
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To: one guy in new jersey

I know. Can you believe such nonsense?


9 posted on 09/30/2025 5:52:05 AM PDT by FamiliarFace (I got my own way of livin' But everything gets done With a southern accent Where I come from. TPetty)
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To: Red Badger

I would call it, “Any Port in a Storm.”


10 posted on 09/30/2025 5:53:54 AM PDT by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: Red Badger

Jay Leno? Interesting timing of seeing this story, I am at my remote cabin which is a 31 mile boat ride to the nearest town. We have stellar jays here. Really friendly birds, had one get inside my cabin yesterday, never had that happen before! I released him on his own recognizance


11 posted on 09/30/2025 5:56:01 AM PDT by Bigbrown
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To: Bigbrown

Stellar Jay....Blue Jay with a Mohawk.............


12 posted on 09/30/2025 5:57:52 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Red Badger

Some birds like cardinals brighten our backyard by entering; others, by leaving—often chased by angry little wrens—like bluejays, the Adam Schiffs of the bird world, obnoxious [Expletives deleted]


13 posted on 09/30/2025 5:58:19 AM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives)
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To: Lazamataz

Blue Jays are real dicks.


Still better than the Yankees.


14 posted on 09/30/2025 6:00:37 AM PDT by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: Lazamataz

They surely are the apex of avian A-holes.


15 posted on 09/30/2025 6:01:52 AM PDT by Sirius Lee ("Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”)
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To: Lazamataz

They surely are the apex of avian A-holes.


16 posted on 09/30/2025 6:01:53 AM PDT by Sirius Lee ("Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”)
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To: dfwgator

The Blue Jays and the Yankees are in a battle.


17 posted on 09/30/2025 6:04:30 AM PDT by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization?)
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To: Red Badger

I just love birds. Most of them anyway. I know buzzards are good for getting rid of road kill, but they are one ugly bird. Blue Jays are a very pretty bird, but ones with an attitude. When I walk into the nearby woods, they will immediately start screeching, and that warns other creatures also. At the feeder they are one of the first to arrive and gorge themselves, but they scatter a lot of the seed to the ground and that feeds the birds that like to eat at ground level like the doves. I’ve seen them drive off hawks that were too near their nest, kind of like Gutfeld taking on Tyrus.


18 posted on 09/30/2025 6:13:58 AM PDT by Omnivore-Dan (have to )
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To: PGalt

Can they both lose?

Go Tigers!


19 posted on 09/30/2025 6:15:45 AM PDT by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: Red Badger

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_5XkPh3vXg&pp=ygUURmFtaWx5IGd1eSBub2FocyBhcms%3D


20 posted on 09/30/2025 6:15:48 AM PDT by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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