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
Yes! And nobody messes with hummingbirds, either...when they get aggressive, other birds clear out!
My dad told me when he was the XO of a destroyer back in the early Sixties going through the Suez Canal, they had a hawk perched on the top of the mast, plucking some other bird, and all the crew was looking up at it as the downy feathers came floating down!
Your observations are amazing. Patience must be dominant in your personality. Truly impressive.
I spent a year after retirement standing at windows videoing birds and squirrels. Nothing like your observations. Just pure pleasure. My patience comes from my notebook logging where I kept track of every bird leaving and arriving for the videomaking.
Backyard Birds - Mozart Piano Sonato in D - 1993
https://youtu.be/zPeUh_Z1dEQ
Night Visitors - Joseph Blanchard - Whimsical Foray
https://youtu.be/4Fz_w97bt4s
Baby Birds - Etude - Chopin - 1993
https://youtu.be/5pVqvCsrZaY
Winter Birds - Chopin’s Etude - 1993
https://youtu.be/XBkqOxMNP4E
Birds and Squirrels - 1993
https://youtu.be/QMSZo73V7D8
Dragonflies and Wildlife Refuge - Mozart - 1993
https://youtu.be/vtjtecjzXhY
Blue Jays sound as if they are sinful.
From grandfather’s articles.
The Water Ousel, Nature’s Premier Singer of Melodies
Nevada State Journal, October 28, 1923
******
Get Acquainted with Nevada’s Birds Says Jack Bell
Nevada State Journal, October 24, 1926
******
The Glorious Glow of the Sangre de Cristo II
Nevada State Journal, December 24, 1922
I agree...and I have come to love observing crows as well...though I am glad I do not live close to a roost of them. A “murder” of crows...love that description of their group!
Crows seem much more like “older people” as Blue Jays are to “teenagers” in my mind.
I could go on all day on the events I have seen with birds. Recently a bald eagle in a field eating a rabbit. Another time a flock of turkeys chasing a dog. My wife was working in her flower bed one day and she had a blouse with a pattern of red roses. A humming bird flew right up to her, maybe only 6 inches away, and flew all around her until it decided the roses weren’t real. One day last year I was looking at all of the dandelions in my lawn. They started to move! Then one of the flew! A flock of goldfinches had come to eat the seeds, but at first sight it just looked like a lot of dandelions. Many more stories including the rescue of a kestrel with a broken wing we took to a rehab facility. When the wing was healed, they called us and said your bird is getting fat, and ready to be released. You can come and watch if you like. I said that would be great but could I return it to where I found it? They hemmed and hawed a bit but said yes, it would be the best for the little hawk. What a gorgeous bird it was. When we released it in the field across from where we live, it circled around us, dipped it’s wing as if to say thanks, and flew up to the tallest tree in the woods to survey it’s old hunting grounds. What a beautiful sight and it really made me feel human.
I am a bird watcher, sort of, that is, when I have a chance to sit down and watch them. Or maybe I am an animal watcher, because I will try to observe anything in my backyard.
That Tufted Titmouse eating from your hand is cute. I’ve never tried to get that close.
“Yes, they are. Don’t know about Green Jays, though..............”
the greens are jealous of the blues and that makes them even bigger dicks.
Thanks for posting
Thanks for posting
“”Our Bluejays are mean, vindictive and intelligent.””
That’s not meanness. It’s bravery and nads. I’ve seen a bluejay dive-bomb my dad for being too near one of their nests. It was hilarious, but also gave me respect for that bird. He was doing what most humans would do if their kids were being threatened.
Some of the best games I remember from the 1980s were the Jays Tigers matchups and the budding rivalry that was developing at that time. Only a 4 hour drive between them so one could do a day game day trip. Once they got placed into different divisions the rivalry all ebbed away. They still played each other but due to the unbalanced scheduling it was rare in comparison to the within division games.
You bet! Love seeing a bird thread...:)
Yeah! I’m with you-I like watching it all.
And I have to tell you-having a wild animal land on your hand and eat from it-that is as charmed as I could get!
And they are sharp, cute little birds. I really like those Tufted Titmouse types! And I like Chickadees, too.
Chickadees are interesting. They did an experiment, and found that Chickadees (who hide, or cache their food so they can get through winter, can remember the location of 6,000 pieces of food they have hidden!!!
Interesting! I had no idea that Chickadees did that! (They sound like squirrels in that regard.)
The past month or so, I have been involved in a new “wildlife” project. I’ve been working with Monarch butterflies. I’ve had one variety of Milkweed plants (swamp) in one landscape bed for a few years, with once in a while seeing a few caterpillars every year.
Then a year ago, a friend of mine had a different variety, common milkweed, and was wanting to thin out her patch. So we dug some up, and I transplanted several of them near my swamp variety. This year, those transplants went crazy, and when the Monarch butterflies came in August, they went to town on eggs. Every day I had dozens and dozens of new caterpillars show themselves, for weeks on end.
Well, we had a cold spell several weeks ago. So I ordered a butterfly habitat, and coaxed 35 caterpillars that were hanging all over my milkweed plants into the habitat, and I brought inside for several days and nights. It warmed back up, and only 2 of those 35 didn’t complete into a chrysalis.
So for roughly 2 + weeks. I have been periodically watching butterflies emerge, and letting them fly free into the big wide world. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. I’ve learned a lot, having never done anything like this before.
So far, 30 butterflies have emerged and flown off. 15 were males, and 15 were females. There’s one chrysalis left that looks like it will be fine. 2 others look diseased, so that’s a shame, but that’s nature.
We are fortunate to live on an almost 2 acre lot. The front is neighborhood. The back is private, very wooded, with a creek in the back. Beyond that is farmland with corn and soybeans. I have our property certified as a wildlife habitat, because that’s really what we have here. We are considered “semi-rural”. Hubby says it’s the best of both worlds. We have neighbors if we need them, and a good bit of privacy, too. We share our lot with the wild animals, and they let us watch them.
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