I’ve been spending a lot of time photographing one of my favorite backyard birds–the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata). You could say it’s one of the iconic birds of backyards all across the eastern half of the country. Not only is this blue beauty a familiar eastern bird, but for over the past 10 years, it has been expanding its range westward pushing into previously uncharted Blue Jay territory such as western Montana, Idaho and Colorado.

I find so many things about the Blue Jay fascinating. Let me tell you about a few. First of all, the Blue Jay is a member of the Crow family called the Corvidae. Jays are closely related to crows and ravens which are considered some of the smartest birds in North America. I don’t think that will come as a big surprise to anyone who has spent any time watching these backyard bandits. I think Blue Jays are incredibly smart, bold, and immensely interesting to watch.

Another interesting and not well known fact about the backyard blue is they have a hidden pouch in their mouth under their tongues. This is called the sub-lingual pouch where the jays collect up a large amount of food such as peanuts to carry back to a nest or to a safe place in which to consume. You can see this for yourself by watching the jays at your own feeder. They will pull a peanut from the feeder and toss it up so that it lands in the back of the mouth where it is stored under the tongue. I have seen a Blue Jay stuff up to 10 shelled peanuts into its pouch at one time. The bulge created by all the peanuts makes them look disfigured and I swear it’s hard for them to fly with all that extra weight.

The Blue Jay could also be the poster-child for all the examples on how birds are colored. Birds are colored in one of three ways. The first way is pigments. There are three main kinds of pigments, melanins, carotenoids and porphyrins. Melanins come from amino acids that the bird obtains from the proteins in its diet. Most birds that are black or brown have a large amount of melanin in their feathers. The second pigment is carotenoids. They produce red, orange and yellow. Birds such as cardinals and goldfinch are brightly colored because of carotenoids. The third pigment is porphyrins which produce some reds and browns and greens. Pigeons and owls obtain their unique colors from porphyrins.

The second way birds are colored is mechanical. Within a jay’s feathers are millions of tiny air filled cells called vacuoles. As sunlight enters the cells the wavelengths of sunlight are separated. Some of the spectrum of sunlight is absorbed by a thin layer within the cell while other wavelength of light are scattered and reflected back to our eyes. In particular the blue, indigo and violet part of the light spectrum is combined and reflected and we see the color blue. So the Blue Jay is blue only by trickery and no actual color or pigment.

To prove this all you need to do is pick up a Blue Jay feather and hold it up to the light and look through the feather from the back or inside to the front or outside. You will see the feather is actually gray not blue. If it was blue due to pigments (which there are no blue pigments in birds) it would be blue no matter which direction you looked at the feather. Without the millions of vacuoles to scatter the blue spectrum of light we would have to rename this bird Gray Jay. Hey come to think of it. There is a species of jay that is all gray and is called the Gray Jay. Sounds like the topic for the next column.

The third way birds are colored is nothing at all. Feathers lacking pigments or vacuoles are white. Now you know why the Blue Jay is the poster child for how birds are colored. They are black, blue and white. Until next time

Stan Tekiela is an author/naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be contacted at his web page at www.naturesmart.com