Every morning now, I can hear the sound of blue jays chirping, so I thought to try drawing one. What do you think?
The blue jay—as a Torontonian, I associate the blue jay with our baseball team, but this songbird has an interesting story outside of baseball.
What I always found fascinating about the blue jay is how similar they are to squirrels. Blue jays cache and carry their food; squirrels store food in their cheeks while blue jays pack in their throats (in what’s called a gular pouch). What’s really neat about this bird is its colour. Blue jays aren’t blue! They are actually brown. The bright cobalt colour comes from how its feathers distort the reflection of light. Simply put, when light hits a blue jay feather, all the colours pass through except for blue due to a special cell found in their feathers. This same effect happens when the blue jay’s feathers become wet too.
Now that’s science in action!