Trickster Jay

In some mythologies the jay is a trickster or boundary crosser, a beautiful, boastful and wholly necessary guide to the otherworld. For me it's a bird of good omen and I welcome their occasional visits to my garden.

Every year, when the youngsters have fledged, the parent birds bring them to my bird-feeder, as though to say ‘if you’re ever in trouble, this is where you come’. 

And so, this afternoon, I see a young jay perched on the fence. He has been in nature’s dressing-up box. He sports an outsized moustache and is wearing baggy pantaloons in a delicious shade of peachy-pink. His jacket is much too big for him.

He will lose the breath-taking vividness of youth, but the luminosity, the exquisite colouring of his plumage will remain. If you saw only the flash of sapphire on his wing, you would think him beautiful, but there is so much more, the startlingly white rump, the neatly pied tale, the sophisticated pinks and greys of his back and chest.  Our very own bird of paradise.