Blue Jay
Cyanocitta cristata
Blue Jay · Prospect Park · 15 November 2025
A Blue Jay in Prospect Park in November, a bird of the eastern woodlands and every park and suburb in them, and one that stays all winter on the acorns it buried in autumn.
The blue in a Blue Jay's feathers isn't pigment at all. It is structural colour, produced by the way light scatters off the internal structure of the feather, which is why a crushed or backlit jay feather shows brown. Jays are also the reason the oaks came north so fast after the last ice age. A single jay buries thousands of acorns each autumn, often miles from the tree, and forgets enough of them to plant a wood.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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