Aphelocoma wollweberi
| Mexican jay | |
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| Mexican jay from Madera Canyon, Arizona, Aphelocoma wollweberi arizonae. note bill color not entirely black, this is a character of the Arizona race |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Corvidae |
| Genus: | Aphelocoma |
| Species: | A. wollweberi |
| Binomial name | |
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Aphelocoma wollweberi (Kaup, 1854) |
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| Subspecies | |
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5, see text |
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5, see text
The Mexican jay (Aphelocoma wollweberi) formerly known as the gray-breasted jay, is a New World jay native to the Sierra Madre Oriental, Sierra Madre Occidental, and Central Plateau of Mexico and parts of the southwestern United States. In May 2011, the American Ornithologists' Union voted to split the Mexican jay into two species, one retaining the common name Mexican jay and one called the transvolcanic jay. The Mexican jay is a medium-sized jay with blue upper parts and pale gray underparts. It resembles the western scrub jay, but has an unstreaked throat and breast. It feeds largely on acorns and pine nuts, but includes many other plant and animal foods in its diet. It has a cooperative breeding system where the parents are assisted by other birds to raise their young. This is a common species with a wide range and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as being of "least concern".
It is native to the Sierra Madre Oriental, Sierra Madre Occidental, and Central Plateau of Mexico as well as eastern Arizona, western New Mexico and western Texas in the United States. Its preferred habitat is montane pine-oak forest.
The Mexican jay is a medium-large (~120 g) passerine similar in size to most other jays, with a blue head, blue-gray mantle, blue wings and tail, and pale gray breast and underparts. The sexes are morphologically similar, and juveniles differ only in having less blue coloration and, in some populations, a pink/pale (instead of black) bill that progressively becomes more black with age (Brown and Horvath 1989). Some field guides misreport this color as yellow because the pale bill becomes yellow in museum study skins. The iris is brown and legs are black. It is most readily distinguished from the similar western scrub jay by the plain (unstreaked) throat and breast, and the mantle contrasting less with the head and wings. Its range somewhat overlaps with the western scrub-jays, but, where they co-occur, the two species seem to show ecological and morphological character displacement (Curry et al. 2002).
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