As temperatures continue to creep upward in Texas, an unusual visitor has appeared in local backyards: a striking bird with the brilliant plumage of a blue jay and the body shape of its tropical cousin, the green jay. Scientists say the “grue jay” is the first known wild hybrid of the two species, born as a result of their once-separate ranges colliding in the wake of climate change.
Biologists at The University of Texas at Austin first became aware of the bird after seeing a grainy image posted by a woman in a suburb northeast of San Antonio. She invited the scientists to her house, explaining that the bird would often visit her backyard.
Unfortunately, catching the odd-looking jay was easier said than done.
“The first day, we tried to catch it, but it was really uncooperative. But the second day, we got lucky,” Brian Stokes, lead study author and a graduate student in ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Texas, said in a statement.
The hybrid “grue jay” was a result of mating between a male blue jay and a female green jay.
Image credit: Brian Stokes/University of Texas at Austin
Once it was caught, Stokes drew a blood sample, tagged the jay’s leg, and set it free. The bird fell off the radar for a few years, but then returned to the same woman’s yard in June 2025.
Upon studying the bird’s genetics and appearance, the researchers concluded it was a male hybrid offspring of a green jay mother and a blue jay father. A similar hybrid was created in captivity by crossing the two species in the 1970s, but this is the first recorded instance of one in the wild.
And it may not be the last.
The two parent species diverged from each other around 7 million years ago and, until recently, they inhabited separate ranges that didn’t overlap. Blue jays thrived in the temperate forests of the eastern US, while green jays flourished in the tropics of Central America, reaching only the very southern edge of Texas. Their worlds rarely, if ever, touched.
Data from eBird showing green jay and blue jay occurrences in Texas reported between 2000 to 2023.
Image credit: Brian Stokes/University of Texas at Austin
However, climate change is rewriting that map. Temperatures are rising, causing the green jay to push further north. Meanwhile, the blue jay is extending its range westward, causing the two species to converge in a region near San Antonio.
“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,” noted Stokes.
“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. 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,” Stokes said.
Even beyond the realm of Texan jays, climate change is creating new opportunities for hybridization by messing with species’ natural ranges. A prime example is the pizzly bear, born as a result of inter-species romping between a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and a polar bear (Ursus maritimus).
Earth is changing fast – and so is the life that inhabits it.
The new study is published in the journal Ecology & Evolution.
Source Link: Meet The "Grue Jay": A Bizarre Rare Bird Spotted In Texas Is A Unique Hybrid Of Two Different Species
