For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

Blue Jays (LINK) are not prone to hang around, especially not when they see a camera. However, if you throw some peanuts on the floor, they linger just long enough to get a few photos.

BUT . . . before I regale you with birds, let me show you a gallery of a birdbath in the rain . . .

Mind you, those aren’t great photos, but, by golly, I done did process them, and I didn’t want to waste the effort.

OK, with that out of the way, on to Blue Jays . . .

You can see there was a bit of snow on the ground (I had cleaned off the patio for the foraging birds) and it was also cold . . . you can see evidence of it in this next photo . . .

This next sequence is the bird approaching from one side and doing a weird maneuver before landing (these are in sequence; five photos in a shade over a second) . . .

The squirrel certainly seemed impressed!

And then, the whole pick up, put down, pick back up routine . . .

But, I think I figured out why it was doing it . . . I don’t know if this is the same bird (they all look like Blue Jays), but note how this bird picks up the peanut and then does repeated adjustments in the way it’s holding it. At one point, it almost looks like he’s swallowing it, but what he’s actually doing is positioning it so that he can pick up two. You can see in the last photo that the peanut he was eyeing (while he already had one in its mouth) is gone once he takes off.

By the way, I especially like that I caught the side view of the hopping . . .

When they take off, they are very quick . . . quicker than my reaction time . . . or is it?

Here’s a bird picking up one of the many nuts I’d strewn about . . .

. . . and here’s my favorite shot . . .

The lighting was bad, and the shot is a little soft, but I was really pleased about catching it as it took off.

By the way, I keep my yard pretty clean . . . all that junk you see (leaves and other debris) is courtesy of my neighbors who don’t do as good a job of cleaning their lawns of leaves. None of those leaves are local (I don’t have trees in the back or sides of the house); they all migrate in from my neighbors.

Anyway, that’s it for these Blue Jay chronicles.

Here’s a slideshow of the SmugMug Gallery linked above. I would normally do a WP gallery, but the quality from SmugMug is much better.

Note: the transition is set to 2sec, but — if you move the cursor anywhere within the photo — you’ll see a pause button on the lower left, and, once paused, you can use the left and right arrows on both sides of the photo to navigate the slideshow. If you click anywhere in the photo instead of the pause button, you’ll exit the slideshow and find yourself in SmugMug. You can still scroll through the photos, or interact in other ways.

SmugMug Slideshow of the Blue Jay gallery.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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