This South American jay has a plush black crest and black-and-yellow plumage. It forages in flocks and may cache surplus food.
It has a plush black crest, a black breast with yellow below, a blue mark above the eye, and a yellow tip on the black tail.
The Plush-crested Jay is a South American member of the crow family. In Brazil, museum specimens from areas where it meets the White-naped Jay showed plumage traits of both species. A 2019 study compared 80 Plush-crested Jay specimens with 137 White-naped Jay specimens and identified two with intermediate plumage.
One specimen came from Três Lagoas in Mato Grosso do Sul, and the other from Comendador Gomes in Minas Gerais. Their plumage included dark grey-brown backs and wings, blue or partly brown-and-blue tails, and pale blue-grey or white napes. Each bird combined traits of the two parent species. The paper reports these specimens as Brazil's first documented case of natural hybridization between New World jay sister species.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In Brazil, researchers compared 80 Plush-crested Jay and 137 White-naped Jay specimens and identified two with intermediate plumage, from Mato Grosso do Sul and Minas Gerais.