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Azure-hooded Jay | Cyanolyca cucullata
Azuurkapgaai | Chara gorro azul
The Azure-hooded Jay is a dark blue jay with a black face and a pale azure-blue hood over the hindcrown and nape. It lives in humid montane forest from eastern Mexico to western Panama and moves through the forest in small, noisy groups.
Voice
Various harsh, nasal calls and a dry rattle, used by groups to keep in contact; often the first sign of their presence.
Recording: George Wagner — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
28–31 cm, including the long tail. Forehead, face, throat and upper breast black. Hindcrown and nape pale azure-blue, bordered at the front by a narrow whitish line. Back, wings, tail and underparts deep dark blue. Bill and legs black. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Black-throated Jay Cyanolyca pumilo (Chiapas to Honduras) is smaller and lacks the pale blue hood. Silvery-throated Jay Cyanolyca argentigula (Costa Rica and Panama) has a silvery white throat and lives higher in the mountains. Steller's Jay Cyanocitta stelleri has a prominent crest and lives mainly in drier pine-oak forest.
Habitat
Humid cloud forest, montane rainforest and the upper foothill forest, mainly in forest with many epiphytes, also forest edges. It forages in pairs or small groups in the middle and upper levels for insects, other invertebrates and fruit, often with mixed flocks of other birds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From the Sierra Madre Oriental of eastern Mexico and the mountains of Oaxaca and Chiapas through the highlands of Guatemala and Honduras to Costa Rica and western Panama, with gaps in the range. The entire range lies within the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Groups are often detected first by their calls. They are often found with mixed flocks in epiphyte-rich montane forest, for example around Monteverde in Costa Rica.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but dependent on humid montane forest, which is disappearing in parts of the range.
Scientific name
Cyanolyca cucullata | (Ridgway, 1885)
Ridgway described the species in 1885 as Cyanocorax cucullatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cyanolyca was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Cyanolyca is Greek, from kuanos 'dark blue' and lukos, a crow-like bird (perhaps the jackdaw) in Aristotle and Hesychius. cucullata is Latin for 'hooded', after the pale blue hood on the hindcrown and nape. The specimen the first description was based on came from Navarro, Costa Rica.