Blue jays are passerine birds that live in the northeast of the United States and the south of Canada. As a reference to their blue color and the feathered crest on their head that they can raise when excited or annoyed, their scientific name is Cyanocitta cristata. There are four subspecies of blue jay.
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Emily Dickinson called hope the thing with feathers and in ‘October Song’ Amy Winehouse sings about her bird that passed away,
Today my bird flew away
Gone to find her big blue jay
Hope may be feathered, but it is love that gives us wings. Or perhaps the butterflies in our stomachs simply make it feel that way.
Coincidentally, both the bright blue in the primary feathers of our crested bird and the blue wings of Morpho butterflies don’t fade. Rather than relying on pigments (like the colors of our hair), the jays’ and butterflies’ blue is a structural color. Microscopic structures on their feathers and scales cause light to reflect, refract, or scatter in certain patterns, producing bright colors.
The blue jay’s brightest feathers don’t fade with age.
Perhaps Amy was right. Perhaps all we want is a love in the shape of a blue jay, colored by the structure of the lovers’ interactions so that it doesn’t fade.
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Blue jays form monogamous pair bonds for life. The male bird diligently feeds its female partner while she broods the eggs and both partners contribute to building the nest and raising the kids. The baby birds learn to fly in about three weeks. After the kids master flight, the blue jay nuclear family travels and forages together for several months.
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It can be hard to admit that you want, need, crave love of the quietly confident subspecies; a cocoon where two caterpillars meet to help each other shape their wings — hard to admit, especially as a man, perhaps, but screw socially imposed gender stereotypes. Wrong newsletter for that.
Let’s return to ‘October Song’,
Starlight before she took flight
I sang her "Lullaby of Birdland" every night
I often wonder if baby birds are scared when they flap their wings the first time they take to the skies.
I wonder if love begins with a similar feeling — the fear, the risk, the wanting to surrender and hoping that the winds will carry you, but knowing that you might crash and burn when you venture too close to the sun. Love is a leap of faith, like a baby bird stumbling from its nest and trusting its instinct to take over.
Perhaps we need a lullaby too, an aspirational model of love. Not the Hollywood version, but a vision of what a true long-term partnership can be; the challenges and the reconciliations, the insecurities and the thousand little joys, the sweet and the bitter.
But before all that, we have no choice but to leap, which is terrifying. Spreading our wings and embarking on those first hesitant flights exposes us to birds of prey and the risk of a lethal fall. To find our blue jay, however, we can’t remain stuck on the ground. We need to soar.
I am not the big blue jay Amy’s bird went looking for. Nothing so overtly shiny (I tell myself). A hooded crow, perhaps, which suits the premature silver that threads my hair and appeals to my inner trickster due to its association with fairies in Irish folklore. My unfading sparkles hide not in feathers but in the glint that lights up my eyes; the glint of a curiosity that seeks to carve the world into an evolving collection of ideas to explore, of a mercurial mischief that tap dances across the quicksand of darker days. Some sparkles shine best against a background of depth.
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Like ravens and crows, blue jays belong to the corvid family and, like many corvids, they are intelligent and inquisitive. They are also territorial, noisy, and aggressive. When faced with one of their many predators, they use loud screams as a deterrent. Blue jays can be vicious toward other birds, (occasionally) raiding other nests.
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Love too can be vicious.
It can be hungry and angry and hangry. Love will inevitably know moments of hurt; it can remain unseen, unheard, and unrequited. It can be mocked and exploited. It can lose its luster if the structures that support it break.
When a bird spreads its wings, it exposes its chest to the world below.
When love spreads its wings, it exposes the heart to potential injury.
But to fly, you have to spread your wings. To soar among the fluffy clouds of love, you have to accept the risk of getting hurt. I haven’t always been good at that — a ripple effect from a different story that ripped the wings from my back. It is, I am, a work in progress, but corvids are clever and curious. They observe and learn. My chains twitch and their imaginary metal clangs before it softens into morning dew. The nubs of newly regenerating wings are itching on my shoulder blades.
‘October Song’ goes on,
In the sanctuary she has found
Birds surround her sweet sound
Love rarely looks the way we imagine it. In a world that bombards us with (metaphorically and literally) filtered images of what love should be, the shape of love is not easy to discern. We rely on dating app filters, wrongly prioritized checklists, and the illusion that the perfect partner will ring our doorbell, sculpted from divine clay and ready to scoop us into an everlasting embrace.
Listening only to the initial rush of an imaginary perfect match is often a recipe for disaster. It is deceptively easy to think you can fly when someone sweeps you off your feet, but that is not enough for flight. You will crash when gravity reclaims you after a brief illusion of weightlessness. You require wings of your own to stay aloft.
What if we accept that the best moment to spread our wings is when we meet someone who makes us feel the safety of a nest and the supportive hands to help us soar? Who encourages us to fly by catching us when we stumble? Who turns the fear of flight into the playful excitement of a shared adventure?
Not everyone needs a big blue jay.
Hooded crows are adorable too.
Thanks for flying with me. Click things; it helps me regrow my wings. More importantly, which bird are you?
“You require wings of your own to stay aloft.” This reminder to retain a strong sense of self even in an interdependent relationship really resonated. It’s often easy to lose oneself in the context of another person, perhaps because most advice focuses on what to look for in someone else rather than how to become someone who attracts the companionship they seek. Ravens and vultures are similarly criminally underrated.
this seagull who has learned to survive on trash and childrens' lunches appreciates you lol