Columnist Sarah Morris’ friend took this photo of a Steller’s jay, its cyan-blue feathers blending into the sky, on a recent trip out West. It was a Steller’s jay that inspired the author’s lifelong interest in birds.
Columnist Sarah Morris’ friend took this photo of a Steller’s jay, its cyan-blue feathers blending into the sky, on a recent trip out West. It was a Steller’s jay that inspired the author’s lifelong interest in birds.
When I wrote my first outdoors column for the Ashland Daily Press in July of 2019, I traced my interest in birds back to a sighting of a Steller’s jay in California when I was in kindergarten, on a time-out in the grassy area behind the classroom thanks to some misbehavior or other. The bright, aqua color of this bird and its noisy, feisty behavior were a joy and a distraction. I missed them after I moved to Indiana and always was delighted to see them on later visits to the Rocky Mountains. Recently my friend Amber went on an epic Colorado adventure and shared some photos and video of one of these sassy camp robbers on social media, and this got me missing them all over again.
Steller’s jays are one of the species that are due to be renamed in English thanks to the recent decision by the American Ornithological Society to phase out names that honor specific people instead of reflecting on the birds traits or habits. And while German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller won’t have jays or eiders named after him anymore, he had an action-packed short life exploring what is now the Bering Strait (named after his ill-fated ship captain) and doesn’t appear to have been as flawed, or at least sketchy, as some of the other eponymous Europeans and Americans.
