Scientists first observed wild hybrid offspring of Blue Jay and Green Jay in a study near San Antonio, Texas.
Hybrid birds are two species of species that began to overlap in habitat ranges decades ago, according to a study published September 10 in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
You might like it
The Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata) and Green Jays (Cyanocorax Yncas) are both families of birds, including crows and ravens. Despite their similar names, the Blue Jays and Green Jays are not very closely related. They do not share any genera, and their lineage split about 7 million years ago.
The Green Jays historically lived in warm tropical regions of Mexico, Central America and southern Texas, while the Blue Jays can be found in most of the eastern US up to Houston. Over the past decades, temperature temperatures have allowed the Green Jays to expand their range further north, but both climate change and human development have made the Blue Jays head west. The two species currently coexist in parts of Texas, near San Antonio.
Stokes, who is studying the Green Jays at UT Austin, found Hybrid Jays through social media in 2023. Birders from the San Antonio area posted photos of rare birds from their backyards and invited Stokes to see the closer birds over the course of two days.
“On the first day we tried to catch it, and it was really supportive,” Stokes said. “But on the second day we were lucky.”
Stokes manages to catch Jay on the fog net. It is a thin mesh hung between two poles that birds find difficult to see. The bird had blue feathers, but it has similar facial markings to the Green Jays, which could generate calls for both species. Stokes took a blood sample from a bird, placed a band on its legs to help identify it in the future, and released it into the wild.
Genetic analysis of blood samples showed that the birds were probably descendants of female green jays and male blue jays. Hybrid birds are the first known crossing of these two species in the wild, but in the 1970s scientists raised green and blue jays in their breeding capabilities. The wild hybrid’s appearance resembles the taxidermy prisoner-raised birds that are now part of the Fort Worth History of Science Collection.
Jay was at least a year ago when Stokes tagged, despite this being the first reported sighting of a hybrid of the two species. Over the next two years, no one else reported finding Jay, but in June 2025 he returned to his own San Antonio area backyard.
If there are other hybrid Jays, they may be difficult to detect. Outside of San Antonio, few people live in areas where the two species overlap, so the chances of someone finding a hybrid are low.
“Hybridization is probably much more common in nature than researchers know because we can’t report these things going on,” Stokes said.
Source link
