The Lidth's Jay is a passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

 bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 in the family Corvidae

Corvidae

Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs and nutcrackers. The common English names used are corvids or the crow family , and there are over 120 species...

, native to Japan. It is slightly larger than its close relative the Eurasian Jay

Eurasian Jay

The Eurasian Jay is a species of bird occurring over a vast region from Western Europe and north-west Africa to the Indian Subcontinent and further to the eastern seaboard of Asia and down into south-east Asia...

, with a proportionately stouter bill and also a longer tail. It has no discernible crest, with the head feather

Feather

Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...

s a velvety black, the shoulders and back a deep purplish blue and all other parts a rich chestnut purple.

This jay

Jay

The jays are several species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the crow family Corvidae. The names jay and magpie are somewhat interchangeable, and the evolutionary relationships are rather complex...

 has a very restricted distribution occurring only on the southern Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese islands of Amami Ōshima

Amami Oshima

is a semi-tropical island in the Amami Islands, which is part of the larger Nansei Islands in Japan. Ōshima literally means big island, and it is the largest of the Amami Islands. It lies roughly halfway between the islands of Okinawa and Kyūshū. Briefly part of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, in 1624 it was...

 and Tokunoshima

Tokunoshima

is an island in the Amami Islands of southwestern Japan. Administatively it belongs to Kagoshima Prefecture. Three towns are located on the island: Tokunoshima, Isen, and Amagi...

 in pine forest, sub-tropical woodland and cultivated areas especially around villages.

Food is largely made up of the acorn

Acorn

The acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives . It usually contains a single seed , enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne in a cup-shaped cupule. Acorns vary from 1–6 cm long and 0.8–4 cm broad...

s of the native oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

 Quercus cuspidata but includes small reptile

Reptile

Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...

s and invertebrate

Invertebrate

An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...

s of many types.

The bird nests in large cavities in trees but otherwise the nest is the same as that of the other two Garrulus species with 3-4 egg

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

s.

The voice is similar to that of the Eurasian Jay

Eurasian Jay

The Eurasian Jay is a species of bird occurring over a vast region from Western Europe and north-west Africa to the Indian Subcontinent and further to the eastern seaboard of Asia and down into south-east Asia...

.