All species › Passerines › Crows, jays and magpies › Dwarf Jay
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Dwarf Jay | Cyanolyca nanus
Witkeeldwerggaai | Chara enana
The Dwarf Jay is the smallest jay in the guide area: a dull blue bird with a black mask and a pale throat. It lives in humid, epiphyte-rich montane forest in eastern and southern Mexico and is often detected by its loud calls but seldom seen.
Voice
Loud, somewhat nasal calls and softer chattering notes, often the first sign of a group in the forest.
Recording: Peter de Rouw — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–23 cm, including the fairly long tail. Plumage mostly dull blue, slightly darker above. A black mask runs from the bill base through the eye. Throat pale, whitish with a bluish tinge. Bill and legs black. Sexes alike.
Confusion species
Unicolored Jay Aphelocoma unicolor is much larger and uniformly blue, without a black mask. Steller's Jay Cyanocitta stelleri is larger and has a prominent crest. White-throated Jay Cyanolyca mirabilis has a black head with a white forehead band and lives further south, in Guerrero and southern Oaxaca.
Habitat
Humid pine-oak forest, cloud forest and fir forest in the mountains, with many mosses, bromeliads and other epiphytes. It forages in pairs or small groups among the epiphytes in the middle and upper levels for insects and other invertebrates.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to Mexico: the mountains of western Veracruz and Puebla to northern and central Oaxaca. The entire range lies within the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Oaxaca the species is searched for in the montane forest of the Sierra de Juárez north of Oaxaca city. Listening for calls and watching for movement among the epiphytes gives the best chance.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The range is limited and fragmented, and the montane forest is being degraded by logging, fires and clearance.
Scientific name
Cyanolyca nanus | (Du Bus de Gisignies, B-AL, 1847)
Du Bus de Gisignies, B-AL described the species in 1847 as Cyanocorax nanus; 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. nanus is Latin for 'dwarf', after its small size for a jay. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mexico (not specified).