Is there a North American who hasn’t heard of the blue jay? At best, you will have heard talk about the baseball team Toronto Blue Jays, which has a literal blue jay head as their logo.
This is one of the most commonly found birds in the United States of America, Canada, Mexico, and some other regions of North America.
However, the blue jay is just one of a number of jays – birds from the family Corvidae, which also includes magpies and crows.
9 Birds That Look Like Blue Jays
Let’s learn about nine birds that are easily mistaken for a blue jay.
1. Indigo Bunting
Despite having a similar color scheme to a blue jay, this is actually a passerine bird in the family Cardinalidae. This means it is more closely related to the Northern Cardinal.
The indigo bunting also overlaps with the California scrub jay and the Florida jay because it migrates between both states quite often during its breeding periods, after which it flies to South America to spend its winter.
The indigo bunting is a smallish songbird that measures 11.5–15 cm (4.5–5.9 in) long, with a wingspan of 18–23 cm (7.1–9.1 in). It weighs an average of 14.5 g (0.51 oz).
2. Mountain Bluebird
This is also not a corvid, which means it’s also not a jay. It is a passerine bird of the Turdidae family which means that it is a thrush.
Thrushes are birds that are renowned for how plump they are and their 100 percent insect-based diet (insectivores). Why mountain bluebirds are sometimes confused for blue jays is because of their color.
In fact, they’re one of the only three known thrushes to be blue in color (family Sialia). We have an article that details the differences between bluebirds and bluejays that you can read here. An interesting fact about this bird is that it can live for up to 10 years in the wild!
3. California Scrub-Jay
If you see a California scrub jay, you may think that you saw a blue jay.
This bird closely resembles the crested cobalt corvid so much that only close scrutiny will reveal the differences between both birds (ornithologists can tell the difference easily, of course). It has the same cobalt blue plumage as a blue jay with very noticeable white accents.
The major difference in their coloration is the gray that streaks across the California scrub jay’s face and body (it is gray-masked and has gray accents on the feathers of its back).
They also closely resemble the Florida jay (more on this later) and the Woodhouse scrub jay and are endemic to California, hence their common name.
4. Steller’s Jay
Steller’s jay easily gets mixed up with the blue jay by people. Sporting the same brilliant cobalt plumage and a crest just like its cousin, the only differentiator is that its secondary color isn’t white but black.
It’s almost the opposite of a blue jay, like the popular video game and cartoon characters Sonic and Shadow the Hedgehogs.
As the only other jay with a crest, its secondary color and the fact that it is larger than a blue jay (by a few centimeters) are facts that you must know to be able to tell both birds apart.
5. Canada Jay
The Canada jay has a peculiar feather arrangement on its head that almost resembles a crest. If it was blue, it would have been easily confused for a blue jay or even a California scrub-jay.
However, its coloration – dark gray above and light gray below, with black on the back of the head forming a partial hood – is what makes it easy to tell it apart from the other jays. In fact, its color scheme influenced its former common name, the Gray jay, until 2018, when it was changed to Canada jay.
The name change was influenced by the fact that it is mostly found in Canada. Another standout difference between this jay, the blue jay, and other jays is its calmness – it is not aggressive like the typical corvids.
6. Florida Scrub-Jay
Urbanization and gentrification of lands in Florida, where this bird is endemic by humans, has caused it to be declared an endangered species.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection puts this bird’s current population at a maximum of 9,000. It is a bird that is also very keenly sought because it cannot be found outside of Florida.
This has led to birders employing different means – including sinister ones – to get them. They are close cousins with the California scrub jay and Mexican jay. The difference is in the color of this bird’s head, which is mostly a dark shade of gray with the blue covering it like a hood.
7. Green Jay
The most beautiful of all jays to look at, in my opinion. It is the only jay that has a color that’s strikingly different from other jays. While every other jay has blue, black, white, or gray as its main color scheme, the green jay is a striking leafy green color with yellow highlights on its tail feathers (which are cyan, a.k.a. greenish-blue).
The most striking thing about this jay is that its head is a brilliant blue and black. The black surrounds its eyes like a mask down to its throat, while the blue covers its head like a hood. This bird is found between Texas and Honduras.
8. Mexican Jay
The many blue-colored jays that exist have led people to simply adopt the fallacy that every jay is blue and, inadvertently, a blue jay.
Except for the Canada jay, every jay that’s been described in this list is blue or has some sort of blue plumage. The Mexican jay is just as difficult to differentiate from other jays because of its blue plumage.
Even for bird enthusiasts, only on closer inspection can they tell that a Mexican jay is not a California scrub jay or a Florida jay, the two jays it resembles the most. The Mexcian jay is sometimes described as the gray-breasted jay because its breast is mostly gray.
9. Pinyon Jay
The pinyon jay is an endangered species. This jay, which enjoys the pinyon pine seeds (which also influenced its name), used to be distributed in regions of Western North America (including Oklahoma, Oregon and Baja California in New Mexico).
However, its preferred habitats in this region have been turned into agricultural lands. Between 1975 and now, this bird’s population size has declined by 85 percent.
This is why they travel and live in large flocks. It is a bluish-gray bird with a standout deeper blue head coloring. Though it is a corvid like other jays, it’s the only jay that belongs to the genus Gymnorhinus making it a rare bird.
Final Thoughts
Now you know all about the different types of jays there are and understand that being blue-colored does not mean it’s a bluebird or a blue jay.
If you want to study blue jays more, you can attract them to your backyard.
Put out suet cakes, whole or shelled peanuts, bread scraps, and sunflower seeds. They don’t like hanging feeders. They can be bullies at bird feeders, so you should add small feeders instead or put out peanut feeders for them to eat from.
