the.com/blue jay
A gorgeous bully in a crow costume, screaming murder at your bird feeder.
means A loud, crested North American songbird (Cyanocitta cristata), known for vivid blue plumage and a harsh, piercing call, that's actually a member of the crow family.
from The 'jay' part traces back through Old French 'jai' to a Late Latin personal name, 'Gaius' — the idea being that the bird's chattering noise reminded people of idle human gossip, so it got a human nickname. The 'blue' is just plain English description, slapped on to distinguish it from its Old World cousin, the (brown) Eurasian jay. So the name itself is a little joke: 'that gossipy Gaius bird, but the blue one.'
- actual color
- brown pigment, blue is light-scattering feather trickery
- voice box
- can mimic hawk calls to clear feeders of rivals
- family ties
- corvid, so basically a crow with better PR
- memory flex
- caches thousands of acorns, remembers most locations