It's a blue jay! It's a green jay! It's a... grue jay? Learn why a hybrid bird spotted in Texas is making headlines across the country.
There are a handful of rare birds that birders will endure physical discomfort, bad weather, and significant travel time for a chance to glimpse. Consider vagrants blown off-course or even off-continent during migration, yellow cardinals, and albino or leucistic birds. If it’s unusual, birders will flock to it: but a recent discovery in San Antonio, Texas, gives “unusual” a subspecies-defying definition. Here’s what to know about the possibly one-of-a-kind “grue jay.”
What is a “Grue Jay?”
This extremely out-of-the-ordinary bird swooped into headlines starting in September 2025, when the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences made a surprising announcement. Graduate students in the ecology, evolution and behavior program had discovered blue jays had mated with green jays in the area of Texas where their ranges overlap. As such, those birds produced offspring with plumage reflecting both species… and the “grue jay” was born.
The bird in the university’s study is the result of a pairing between a male blue jay and a female green jay. It displays the green jay’s dark mask and the blue jay’s white-tipped blue wing and tail feathers. More dilute than a blue jay but far bluer than a green jay, this bird may be the first of its kind to exist in the wild.
Meet more types of jays you should know.
Is This Hybrid Jay Species a Product of Climate Change?
The “grue jay” almost certainly owes its existence to shifts in climate. As temperatures have warmed over the past decades, blue jays have expanded their range. One such area they moved to inhabit is Texas, where green jays had begun to shift north. Those ranges meet around San Antonio, where researchers found the blue-green hybrid.
“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,” Brian Stokes, graduate student in ecology, evolution and behavior at the university and the first credited researcher on the study, said in a press release.
Brian located the bird through a social media post. Over a span of two days (and with permission from the homeowner), he managed to safely catch the bird, take a blood sample, and band it. Analysis completed by Brian and his professor, Tim Keitt, confirmed hybridization and revealed the bird was male. Surprisingly, the bird vanished from the homeowner’s yard for a few years, and then it returned.
Brian notes in the press release that while this discovery is rare for us humans, such hybridization probably occurs more frequently than we’d know. “There’s just so much inability to report these things happening,” he said. After all, as he mentioned, if the birder who first spotted the jay had been two houses down, he might never have known about the “grue jay.”
For now, the birding community is awed by this unique individual; and perhaps those who have the good luck to see the bird in their yard might leave out some unsalted peanuts.
Sources
- The University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences, “So What Should We Call This – a Grue Jay?“
