Our First Blue Jay!

Okay so I did not take this picture. But I did see one today. One of my daily enjoyments is feeding the birds. Joslyn and I usually venture out to our porch in the afternoons and I let her play. Sometimes she plays with chalk, sometimes she plays with playdough, sometimes its her outdoor toys, but almost always she helps me feed the birds. Now granted most of her helping is eating some of the bread and the rest is dropping it for the eager awaiting dogs. But she will throw out a piece or two for the actual birds. Normally, we only used bread that is going bad or leftover cereal or stale chips to them. Most of our birds are House sparrows. Occasionally we see doves, but most of them won't come and eat our measly leftovers, which is fine with me. I hate doves, they remind me of pidgeons. But the sparrows are very cute and fun to watch. They fight over pieces of bread when there is another piece at their feet. They get very anxious when they see us come out of the house. They will land really close and look at me, almost begging for their treat. The really cool thing is that they will flitter away when I throw bread at them, only to have them come right back, but my dogs and child on the porch don't scare them one bit.

So anyways you can imagine my delight to see a blue jay. I have heard that they are kind of aggressive, but this Blue jay just took a piece of bread and flew off. It makes our bird watching activity so much more colorful. Even on days like this when I am so sick, I can feed the birds and feel joy. I am grateful that Joslyn is learning to take care of the animals too.!