Once the sunflowers turn dry and lose their yellow petals they might appear sad, but instead they turn into a cafe and trapeze for the acrobatic antics of the blue jays which flock in and dine in every position, including hanging upside down. I grow the sunflowers for their beauty and for the fun of watching these birds, and so I still have to buy my sunflower seed for my parrots at the feed store.
BLUEJAYS
Now there is more to a bluejay than any other animal. He has got more different kinds of feeling. Whatever a bluejay feels he can put into language, and not mere commonplace language, but straight out and out book talk, and there is such a command of language. You never saw a bluejay get stuck for a word. He is a vocabularized geyser. Now you must call a jay a bird, and so he is in a measure, because he wears feathers and don't belong to any church, but otherwise he is just as human nature made him. A bluejay hasn't any more principle than an ex-congressman, and he will steal, deceive and betray four times out of five; and as for the sacredness of an obligation, you cannot scare him in the detail of principle. He talks the best grammar of all the animals. You may say a cat talks good grammar. Well, a cat does; but you let a cat get excited, you let a cat get at pulling fur with another cat on a shed nights and you will hear grammar. A bluejay is human; he has got all a man's faculties and a man's weakness. He likes especially scandal; he knows when he is an ass as well as you do.
- "Morals Lecture," 7/15/1895; similar passage in A Tramp Abroad
by Mark Twain
I enjoyed your narrative immensely along with the piece by Mark Twain. Blue Jays and mockingbirds are very much alike....a feisty bunch but so endearing and very interesting to watch. Lovely shot, Dixie!
Good capture. I debate each Autumn about pulling up the sunflower stalks when they have stopped blooming. However, the birds really like the sunflower seeds. Therefore the dead stalks remain in the garden.
