Blue Jay

Cyanocitta cristata

Those of us who spend most of our time on the west coast don’t get to meet this iconic jay. Their bold nature and bright plumage ensured this species captured the attention of the earliest Europeans arriving in North America.

Today, taxonomists recognize four subspecies of Blue Jay:

• C. c. bromia lives from eastern British Columbia and across Canada to the Maritime Provinces and south through much of the mid-western USA and east to the Appalachian states of the Atlantic Seaboard.
• C. c. cristata lives from southern Missouri east through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia to North Carolina and south from southeastern Texas along the Gulf Coast to northern and central Florida.
• C. c. semplei lives in southern Florida.
• C. c. cyanotephra lives in southeastern Wyoming and Nebraska, south through eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and from Oklahoma to northern Texas.

It was not until my epic 16,000-mile expedition through western North America, that I met this bird at the northwestern limit of its summer breeding range. I met more of these birds during my 2023 tour of the Canadian heartland of Ontario, Ohio, Kansas, and the Appalachian states of the USA. In my experience, unless one can attend a well-stocked feeding station, Blue Jays are a shy lot. Their boisterous and loud calls can be easily heard. Yet they are usually content to remain on high in the denser canopies of the broadleaf trees they seem to love.