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San Blas Jay | Cyanocorax sanblasianus
Acapulcogaai | Chara de San Blas
The San Blas Jay is a black-and-blue jay with a short tuft on the forehead that moves in groups through the dry lowlands along the Pacific coast of western Mexico. Its names refer to the small port of San Blas and, in Dutch, to Acapulco. In the guide area it lives from Nayarit to Guerrero.
Voice
Noisy. Loud, harsh calls and dry rattles, often by the whole group.
Recording: Aziza Cooper — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
29–33 cm, with a long tail. Head, neck and underparts black, with a short, erect tuft on the forehead; back, wings and tail blue. Adults have a black bill; young birds have a yellow bill that gradually turns black. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Purplish-backed Jay Cyanocorax beecheii (further north, to Nayarit) is larger, with a purplish-blue back, yellow eye and yellow legs and no tuft. Yucatan Jay Cyanocorax yucatanicus and Bushy-crested Jay Cyanocorax melanocyaneus look very similar but live elsewhere. Green Jay Cyanocorax yncas is green and yellow.
Habitat
Dry deciduous forest, thorn scrub, forest edges, mangrove edges, plantations and orchards and villages with trees, in the lowlands and foothills. It eats insects, small vertebrates and fruit. It lives in groups and breeds cooperatively.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Pacific lowlands of western Mexico, from Nayarit through Jalisco, Colima and Michoacán to Guerrero. It does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly found around San Blas in Nayarit, in forest edges and plantations behind the coast.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Locally common within its restricted range.
Scientific name
Cyanocorax sanblasianus | (de Lafresnaye, 1842)
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1842 as Pica San-Blasiana; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cyanocorax was introduced in 1826 by Boie. Cyanocorax is Greek, from kuanos 'dark blue' and korax 'raven': a 'blue raven', after the blue colours of many species. sanblasianus means 'of San Blas', after the port in Nayarit, one of the originally cited localities. The specimen the first description was based on came from Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico.