Cyanocitta cristata
What a wonderful phrase
Cyanocitta cristata
They’re blue and they’re jays
I enjoyed reading Crow Country, by Mark Cocker, a nature writing classic mostly about rooks (and jackdaws).
- On warblers: "those tiny sheaves of feather wrapped around a thimbleful of blood, a few grams of wing muscle and some twiglets of hollow bone"
- On rook faces: "The grey scaly character, especially around the eye, has a reptilian quality that seems primitive and ugly. I feel I'm being offered an insight into the appearance of the bird's original dinosaur ancestors."
- On beauty: "A really significant element in ascribing beauty to a thing lies not within itself, but in the quality of our attention to it."