Blue Jay Bath Day

It must be Blue Jay Bath Day - this guy frolicked in our birdbath so long I was able to get my camera and take these:

He splashed about until the water was almost gone, spilled onto the primroses and ferns.  Then he hopped up the stem of the feeder:

jumped onto the top of the bird feeder and set it swinging, shook himself, settled his feathers, gave one mighty squawk that sounded like "Who's there?" and took off.

I love the birds in my garden - the pygmy nuthatch that creeps upside down around the old oak trees and is shy of his own shadow: 

The bashful bush tits, the hummingbirds that swoop like dragons. The Nuttall's woodpeckers - husband and wife - who take turns spinning on the suet feeder.

The mockingbird whose clock is off, who wakes us at 1.  In the morning.  The bashful owls we never see, only hear.

But I love the jays least of all.  Maybe it's their voices, that raucous rasp.  Maybe it's their reputation for eating other birds' babies. 

But this morning, looking out the kitchen window at the clown in the birdbath, I was glad there are jays in my garden.