Steller's jay

[stel-erz]

noun

1. a common jay, Cyanocitta stelleri, of western North America, having blackish-brown and dusky-blue plumage.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Steller's jay¹

1820–30, after George W. Steller (1709–46), German naturalist

Example Sentences

Further on, she discovered a Steller’s jay.

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Today, it showed, he had spotted a Steller’s jay and a crow.

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Some, like the carlottae subspecies of the darkly coloured Steller’s jay, underscore the fact that while much of the country was blanketed by glaciers 10,000 years ago, other pockets remained ice-free, allowing species to thrive and become genetically distinct from landlocked counterparts.

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It was a once-in-a-morning foray onto my deck, and my photographic quarry was a male Steller’s jay: a common bird around my home near Lake Tahoe.

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Yet each sighting of another species still seems to thrill him, whether that creeper, or a common Steller’s jay or a ruby-crowned kinglet.

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