Black-headed Jay

The black-headed jay, or lanceolated jay, is a relatively large songbird of the crow family, roughly the size of the Eurasian jay but a little more slender. It has a largely grey body with a black head, an untidy crest, white streaks on the throat and a pale bill, slightly shorter and thicker than the Eurasian jay's. It is non-migratory in the cached account and ranges from eastern Afghanistan eastwards across the Himalaya through India, Nepal and Bhutan (Wikipedia, general species account).

It occurs in wooded country with large areas of open ground at 570–4,000 m and feeds both on the ground and in trees. It can be bold near human habitation, visiting agricultural land and garbage dumps, and its voice is very like the Eurasian jay's, with longer pauses between calls; the call is most often a harsh kraaa. Both parents feed the young. SoIB 2023 treats it as a Western Himalayan endemic and rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a resident and altitudinal migrant with a Moderate range of about 79,600 km² and a decline of about 41% over the long term (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).