There was something strange about the turquoise-colored songbird flying around San Antonio in 2023. With its black-and-white tail bands and its jeering honk, it somewhat resembled and sounded like a blue jay. But it had the face and low, two-tone rattling call of a green jay.
The bird turned out to be an extremely rare hybrid that some are calling a “grue jay.” Genetic testing showed the hybrid bird had a green jay mother and a blue jay father, scientists report September 10 in Ecology and Evolution.
Though bird hybrids are not uncommon, a pairing between these two jays is remarkable as their ranges only recently began to overlap