hckrnws
"Grue" has a surprising variety of meanings:
Obsolete/dialiectical English: to shudder with fear, or a shudder (related to "gruesome")
Computer games: in Zork, a monster that eats adventurers in the dark [0]
Linguistics: an English translation for words that cover the entire green-blue part of the spectrum (in languages that don't distinguish blue from green) [1]
Philosophy: a color name that is equivalent to green until a specific future time, at which point it becomes equivalent to blue (used to raise questions about how to validly extrapolate into the future) [2]
[0]: https://zork.fandom.com/wiki/Grue
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_lang...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction#Grue_a...
It also means crane in French, both the construction kind and the bird. When I first saw the name I guessed there must be some relationship to cranes.
Others:
French: grue may also crane both as the bird and the construction machine.
Italian: gru also means crane (bird).
Norwegian: grue may either mean the verb "to dread” or a noun meaning fireplace/hearth.
Gheg Albanian (dialect): grue means wife/woman.
Primarily Scottish but also Northern English (regionalism): (1) ground-gru / grue means a half-liquid snow or ice that forms and floats on the surface of a river, sometimes thought to have risen from the riverbed. (2) a tiny bit or particle, e.g. He hasn’t a grue of sense.
Similar words:
Latin: grus may mean a crane (bird) or a type of siege engine / war machine bearing similarity to the neck of a crane (bird).
Catalan: grua - same as French.
Esperanto: gruo also means crane (bird) or machine.
Swiss German (dialect): grüezi means "God greets you".
Romanian: grâu means wheat.
English: GRU is term for Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie).
It looks a ton like the California Scrub Jay: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/assets/photo/302371821-1... (https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/California_Scrub-Jay/pho...)
It is a grue jay only if it will devour you in the dark.
It seems we have failed to properly educate our children.
It is ignorance like this this makes me believe that civilization is doomed.
But we only have ourselves to blame
Why would it devour you in the dark?
It’s a reference to the classic interactive fiction game Zork: https://zork.fandom.com/wiki/Grue
I wish black cap and Carolina chickadees would do this to further increase the confusion around them.
> the range of blue jays, a temperate bird living all across the Eastern U.S., only extended about as far west as Houston. They
I get why the green jay’s habitat would have expanded northward (from more tropical areas) in a warming climate, but I don’t get why the blue jay’s habitat would have expanded west of Houston.
Like many places, central Texas is warmer than it used to be, and maybe drier, but I wouldn’t think you could call it more “temperate” now.
Human changes to ecosystems have altered the range of many bird species. Not just climate -- farming, ranching, housing, and recreational land uses tend to dramatically cause changes to bird ranges.
A gray jay sounds about right.
I get that the changing weather might change their habitual latitudes but there was and is always some "boundary" between the two, no? So there was always a boundary but it moves north or south depending on warming or cooling climates (these birds have been around for millions of years). How did they only mate now?
> How did they only mate now?
A lot of the differences between species is due to behavior issues, not actual physical difficulty. It's likely that both species of jay mate at different times or display different mating signals. They've been separated for something like 75 million years which leaves plenty of time for their behaviors to change.
> They've been separated for something like 75 million years
That sounds very, very wrong on the biological timescale.
Article says 7 million
Gray Jays exist in North America, so that names already taken.
(They have been renamed to "Canada Jay," but that's a hilarious story for another day)
Bleen Jay. It's more blue than green, and and also forms a mildly amusing pun, which is good for marketing.
>“We think it’s the first observed vertebrate that’s hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change,” said Brian Stokes
When all you have is a hammer…
More like: "HN Commenter Shocked To Discover Climate Change Changes Lots Of Things"
That's not snappy enough for the Onion really.
If you tend not to believe something, give greater weight to evidence that it's true. If you tend to believe it, give less weight and actively seek for other explanations. This is how we defeat the confirmation bias in ourselves and have better arguments.
For example, believe climate change is quite real but have a poor intuition for its scale and timeline, which is why I am extra skeptical about the claim that these specific habitat changes are caused by climate change, and wonder what other factors may come into play. (I have the same reaction to climate events - if sloppy thinkers claim heat waves are evidence for climate change, then equally sloppy thinkers on the other side can claim cold snaps are evidence against. Both are wrong, and waste our time.)
Authors should speculate about alternative causal chains even if they eventually discard them. This builds trust. Unfortunately this good behavior is associated with climate change denialism, and so those who admit its reality simply don't offer an alternative even when the complexity of the situation is extremely high. The result, ironically, is just more badvocacy on both sides, more noise in the infospace, which ultimately means the "do nothing" side wins.
I think it should be called a Blue Gray.
green jay looks more like a hybrid than the actual hybrid the post is about...
The blue jay too. The plumage on the top and bottom looks like it comes from different birds.
TIL uta has a brilliant website. And apparently no tuition, well done them.
You might be thinking of University of Austin, the unaccredited liberal arts college. This website is run by the University of Texas at Austin.
Ah yes, the elusive grue jay. As blue jays are corvids—relatives of crows and ravens, the grue jay, known for its habitat in colossal caves, is a relative of the similarly chthonic Deep Crow: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/03/21/the-crevice
why don't simply name "bluegreen jay" clearly from the colors we observe? As one of the users in comments said, it's ignorance (improper education reference) and we are only doing "mocking" if coming with such nicknames.
Dull Jay.
Comment was deleted :(
Trying to be both blue and green so perhaps.. a mockingjay..
It will be interesting to learn if the hybrids are fertile or not
They seem to think so in this article https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/10/21/blue-jay-green-ja...
They say the exact opposite?
>So, you know, it's theoretically possible, but we haven't seen the evidence of that yet.
I'm disappointed this wasn't a Nelson Goodman reference.
Comment was deleted :(
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