During this visit to Colorado I noted that there had been several local sightings of Blue Jays, a bird I had never seen. Naturally, I keyed my birding adventures those three days to places where they had recently been sighted. Not unexpectedly, the closest I came to see a flash of blue feathers was a Great Blue Heron and a Belted Kingfisher, which I can easily find down the hill from me at home.
Resigned to not seeing a Blue Jay this visit, either, I went to the grandkids’ mile race on Thursday morning and took my camera to record their efforts. I had just finished photographing the final race and was sitting on a large rock waiting for the final awards when something raucous called to me from a large tree nearby.
It didn’t take but an instant to realize that since I had given up looking for the Blue Jay it had come looking for me, instead.
It even briefly glanced back to confirm I had seen it.
I had. I’d already walked around the other side of the tree and waited to see if it would appear.
In the end I think I got a shot of every side of the bird except from the classic angle
that best shows those tail feathers.
I might have eventually got that shot, too, but, being the dutiful grandfather that I am, I left the jay to its own devices when I heard the 5th-grade awards being announced. As it turned out, I ended up being on the wrong side to get a decent shot of Zoe getting her medal, but such is the luck of the casual photographer.
Of course, it didn’t help when I went online a few days later and saw that Shelley Powers (Burningbird) had posted a beautiful shot of a Blue Jay on her fountain before I could post my shots.