AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Here's a fun question. What do you call the offspring when a blue jay and a green jay mate? Well, in Texas, when one such bird was discovered, the name that the public has decided on is grue jay. But researchers are calling it something else - a potentially important sign of the impact of climate change and urbanization. As Kaye Knoll of the Texas Standard reports, there's a whole lot to chirp about.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRUE JAY CALL)
KAYE KNOLL: What you've just heard is the call of a brand-new bird.
BRIAN STOKES: This bird specifically came about by a female green jay mating with a male blue jay. And the individual we found was a male hybrid. At the time we found it, it was about a year old.
KNOLL: Brian Stokes, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, has completed a study into this new bird after taking samples when he found it hanging around a backyard bird feeder in San Antonio. It's not technically a new species, but instead a hybrid, and it's been nicknamed the grue jay - part green jay, part blue jay. These species don't normally mate with each other. Historically, they've occupied very different parts of Texas. Green jays hail from the south, down towards the border with Mexico, while blue jays flock further east, closer to Louisiana and Arkansas. According to Stokes, they're meeting in the middle because their habitats are expanding. These days, you can find green jays as far north as San Antonio. They've seen a northern shift of more than a hundred miles.
STOKES: It's a pretty substantial expansion of their range, whereas blue jays have expanded a little bit. They would have been somewhat uncommon far west of Houston back in the '50s or '60s, but their populations have really increased in areas like Austin and San Antonio.
KNOLL: The likely culprit? Stokes says changes in climate and land use. As Texas gets hotter, the birds feel more comfortable flying further into the state, closer to big urban areas. Meanwhile, the people in those areas have been planting more large, deciduous trees.
In that sense, this grue jay might be one of a kind. In a press release, Stokes has called it the first bird that's hybridized due to these factors. Researchers have seen other species create hybrids in the wild, but according to Stokes' study, this could be the first time two species have met and mated specifically because of climate change. So if you see a grue jay, how will you know? What does it look like?
STOKES: It looks really similar to a blue jay. So the majority of its body is kind of a similar color to a blue jay you would see in most of eastern Texas. It maybe has a little less iridescence than some of the blue jays have.
KNOLL: But Stokes notes that the grue jay has a distinctive black mask.
STOKES: And that's what made it stick out to us from the pictures we saw at first, where it looked so similar to a blue jay, but it had such a distinct facial marking that looked just like how green jays in Texas look.
KNOLL: The research team has only found one grue jay so far. Stokes believes it's possible that there could be more in an overlap zone for the two parent bird species. It's also currently unknown whether the hybrid can reproduce. It seems possible from a purely genetic perspective, Stokes says. So if you're in the area, keep a lookout. You never know - if you're an eagle-eyed bird watcher, you might just spot one yourself.
For NPR News, I'm Kaye Knoll in Austin.
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