Rare chicken alert in Texas yields hybrid of blue jays and inexperienced jays

Birds of a feather flock collectively, the adage goes. But a rare bird noticed in Texas suggests there’s extra ornithological intermingling than beforehand thought.

When researchers on the University of Texas at Austin found a strange-looking chicken noticed close to San Antonio, they visited the scene in June 2023 and took a blood pattern. Test outcomes revealed the chicken as a hybrid – the results of a blue jay mating with a inexperienced jay – they reported this month in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

The chicken could also be among the many first examples of climate change contributing to the formation of hybrid animals, the researchers say, because the habitat ranges of blue jays and inexperienced jays didn’t overlap till just a few many years in the past.

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“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,” stated Brian Stokes, a University of Texas graduate pupil in ecology, evolution and habits who’s a co-author of the research, in a story describing the research on the university’s College of Natural Sciences website.

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Stokes was alerted to the uncommon chicken when a house owner posted about it in a Facebook birding group in May 2023. He went to the house in Bexar County, close to San Antonio, to watch the chicken earlier than capturing it, taking a blood pattern and inserting a steel tagging band on its leg, then releasing it, in accordance with the study.

“The first day, we tried to catch it, but it was really uncooperative,” Stokes is quoted as saying within the UT information story. “But the second day, we got lucky.”

The chicken, which is primarily blue like a blue jay, however has the inexperienced jay’s elevated black coloring on its face, is a male hybrid offspring of a inexperienced jay mom and a blue jay father, Stokes and Tim Keitt, a University of Texas integrative biology professor, say within the research. The chicken made sounds widespread to blue jays and inexperienced jays in Texas, they stated.

“Hybridization between these species is remarkable across vertebrate species,” they write, as blue jays and inexperienced jays are totally different species separated by 7 million years of evolution.

Blue jay and inexperienced jay spottings in Texas

The researchers attribute adjustments in climate patterns to the mating of the totally different birds. They observe that within the Fifties, inexperienced jays had been discovered from Central America throughout Mexico and into South Texas, whereas blue jays had been extra generally discovered within the japanese U.S., making the animals unlikely to return into contact.

However, sightings of blue jays and inexperienced jays inside the similar territory elevated from 2000 to 2023, the researchers say.

More species could have distinctive mating meetups as they transfer in response to local weather change and different “ecological pressures,” the researchers say. “Anticipating the nature and consequences of these novel interactions represents a central challenge for ecologists in the coming decades.”

As for this specific uncommon chicken, which the researchers did not give a nickname, it returned to that suburban residence for an additional go to in June 2025.

Luckily, the hybrid jay made a cease there two years in the past, Stokes stated within the information story. “If it had gone two houses down, probably it would have never been reported anywhere,” he stated.

Mike Snider is a nationwide trending information reporter for USA TODAY. You can comply with him on Threads, Bluesky, X and electronic mail him at  mikegsnider  &  @mikegsnider.bsky.social  &  @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com

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