White-throated Magpie-Jay

The white-throated magpie-jay (Cyanocorax formosus) is a large Central American species of magpie-jay. It ranges in Pacific-slope thorn forest from Jalisco, Mexico, to Northern Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Magpie-jays are noisy, gregarious birds, often traveling in easy-to-find flocks, mobbing their observers. == Taxonomy == The white-throated magpie-jay was formally described in 1827 by the English naturalist William Swainson from a specimen that had been collected by the naturalist William Bullock in Temascaltepec, Mexico. Swainson coined the binomial name Pica formosa. The specific epithet is from the Latin formosus meaning "beautiful". The white-throated magpie-jay and the black-throated magpie-jay were formerly placed in their own genus Calocitta. When molecular phylogenetic studies found that the genus Cyanocorax was paraphyletic relative to Calocitta, the two species were subsumed into Cyanocorax to resolve the paraphyly. Three subspecies are recognised: C. f. formosus (Swainson, 1827) – Colima, Michoacán and Puebla south to Oaxaca (southwest Mexico) C. f. azureus (Nelson, 1897) – Oaxaca and Chiapas (southeast Mexico) and west Guatemala C. f. pompatus (Bangs, 1914) – east Chiapas (southeast Mexico) and east Guatemala to northwest Costa Rica The white-throated magpie-jay hybridizes in Jalisco with the black-throated magpie-jay (C. colliei), with which it forms a superspecies. == Description ==…