A backyard in suburban San Antonio delivered a scientific first. A bird with a blue jay’s tail, a green jay’s crown, and a startling blue throat patch turned out to be a natural hybrid between the two species.
Biologists at the University of Texas at Austin confirmed the parentage: a blue jay father and a green jay mother, separated by roughly seven million years of evolution, now meeting in Texas as their ranges shift in a warming climate, Earth.com reports.
A rare hybrid bird has been discovered in a Texas backyard.
Climate Change Closed the Gap
In the 1950s, green jays barely reached South Texas, while blue jays seldom ranged west of Houston. As temperatures rose, green jays moved north and blue jays pushed west until their maps overlapped near San Antonio. The hybrid is likely among the first vertebrates formed because both parent species expanded in response to changing weather patterns.
“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,” lead author Brian Stokes, a UT Austin graduate student, told ScienceDaily.
The bird is the offspring of a blue jay and a green jay.
A Mystery Bird, a Quick Capture
The case began online. A homeowner posted a grainy photo to a local birding group. Stokes visited, set a mist net, and—after an uncooperative first day—caught the bird, took a small blood sample, banded it, and released it. Years passed before it reappeared in June 2025 in the same yard.
“If it had gone two houses down, probably it would have never been reported,” Stokes told Popular Science.
Proof in the DNA—and the Voice
Genetic testing confirmed the wild hybrid, echoing a lab-made cross from the 1960s now preserved in a Texas museum. The San Antonio bird showed blended traits, including unusual vocalizations that mixed blue jay calls with green jay rattles and bill-clicks, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The peer-reviewed study was published on September 10, 2025, in *Ecology and Evolution*.
What Comes Next
Researchers estimate today’s climatic overlap zone for the two jays spans about 5,200 square kilometers in Texas and could shift more than 100 kilometers north by mid-century under moderate scenarios—raising the odds of future encounters, according to the Houston Chronicle. Stokes believes many such crossings go unnoticed.
“Hybridization is probably way more common in the natural world than researchers know,” he told Earth.com.
In one Texas neighborhood, climate-driven range shifts brought green and blue together. The result was a living snapshot of rapid ecological change—and a bird no field guide had prepared anyone to see.
