Blue Jays

[sdi]

I've mentioned before that for the last year or so, my angel has liked to gift me bird feathers. I've also been talking about light lately. I was just thinking about these today and thought I'd share something nifty.

The prize feather from my collection is from a blue jay. (A distant cousin, perhaps—I'm a Jay myself, you know.) I didn't realize this until I was given the gift, but did you know that blue jays aren't blue? They're actually gray, but iridescent in such a way that, if the light hits them from the correct angle, they "shimmer" blue instead of show their normal color, sort of like moonstone or labradorite. I suppose we don't notice this on a live blue jay since their feathers are aligned in all sorts of angles, so some feathers are always hitting the light at the right angle and making them look blue—but with a single feather, it's very obvious: if you rotate it just right, it'll turn from dull gray to brilliant sky blue and back again.

If you haven't seen a blue jay feather up close, I hope you have the chance to, someday.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Wonderful! Did not know this.

Since you mentioned it some time back, I have been encountering feathers more and more frequently—sometimes indoors, where they probably shouldn't be. It's quite likely that I just never noticed them until you brought it up, but still fun.

The wife and I some weeks back came across a red-tailed hawk feather...a true beauty. That one came home with us.

[sdi]

Ha—yes, it is fun! It always makes me smile to find one in a bizarre place. Glad to see your angel smiling on you :)

[boccaderlupo]

I should probably be less surprised, given that my ancestral path is so angel-centric to begin with, but it is always a pleasant wonder.

Axé and all blessings to you.

[temporaryreality]

We have bold and sassy scrub jays here - I’ll look more carefully next time I find one of their feathers, but now that you mention it, I recall them as mostly gray but always put that down to assuming I was seeing “underfeathers”. Scandalized scrub jays!

Have you ever read Ursula LeGuin’s “Always Coming Home”? Feathers are messages there, too.

[sdi]

Oh, I've never seen those—they're cute! I was looking it up and the Audubon Society says that birds never managed to evolve blue pigment, so all blue bird feathers are blue because of iridescence rather than pigmentation. So I suppose the scrub jay feathers should work the same way!

As for LeGuin, no, the only thing of hers I've ever read was a translation of the Tao Te Ching... it seems that feathers as angelic messages is common folklore, at least in Britain—I see it all the time in NDE and mystical literature from there—but I've never found a proper source for the belief! (I mean, I guess my own experiences act as a firsthand source, but still...)