bird 6

blue jay
cyanocitta cristata

continuing to blip birds from my porch, i take on my nemesis, the blue jay. he is a very handsome fella with a fine crest. he is of a color not seen frequently in nature. although he can be noisy and doesn't play particularly well with others, people seem to tolerate him for his good looks.

if they only knew what i learned in elementary school. i learned that blue jays poke their bills into other bird's eggs and kill them. i imagined a nasty jay sitting on the edge of another bird's nest with yolk dripping from his beak while the mother bird circled the nest frantically. after hearing that, my mind was made up about jays.

yesterday, while listening to morning edition on NPR, i learned that animals use pigments from all colors of the spectrum except blue. cardinals eat red berries and their feathers get the pigment to turn red. flamingos eat shrimp and turn pink. etc. but while there are blue butterflies, birds and beetles, there is no blue pigment. these animals get their color from photonics* rather than pigments. in the case of at the jay, the barbs on his feathers refract light in such a way that the feather appears blue. i will spare everyone the details, but research being done at oxford (on the crown feathers of blue tits - if you're interested) suggests that there may be a way to create nano structures similar to the barbs on bird feathers for advancement in photonics. being the biology major i am, this was interesting to learn. maybe these blue jays do actually have something to offer.

i have always enjoyed your color, mr. blue jay. i do so even more now that i know where it comes from. as for the yolk dripping off your beak, i will chalk that up to my vivid imagination. but if i ever catch you…. smile.

* in case you're wondering (i was), photonics is the study and technology of using light for the transmission of information. think lasers, fiber optics, etc.