Jemima Update: Enter Maybelline

Do you notice blue jays more than you used to? When you see them, do you take the time to really watch them? Is there perhaps more affection and understanding in your gaze than usual?

Good. Jemima and I are doing our job.

While I don't expect Jemima's fans to undergo a full-blown BJO (Blue Jay Obsession) the way I have, a little obsession never hurt anybody. Everywhere I go, and I mean everywhere, I hear blue jays. I see blue jays. And when I hear blue jays, I grin from ear to ear. Because I don't hear birdcalls. I hear my girl yelling. I fancy I know what they're saying to each other. Thanks to having raised Jemima, I am hooked into the world of blue jays. And I am still an infant, still opening my eyes, taking most things in without knowing their meaning.

But I know a whole lot more than I did on May 15, the day before Jemima entered my life.

A beautiful jay in Mount Auburn Cemetery in mid-October. I walked around that place until I ran into some jays. And then I was in heaven, just me watching the blue people, doing what the blue people do. And them watching me back. Maybe seeing the pictures in my head of my Jemima, back home. Maybe getting why I was so glad to see them. I consider that a distinct possibility.

Here's the deal with Jemima as of November 13, 2017. She's still here.  I held my breath all through September and October and the first half of November, because that's when blue jays move, if they're going to move. And ours seemed to empty out. I'd hear jays in the woods, but the ones that had been coming to the feeders were gone, or otherwise occupied. It's hard to know with blue jays. 

The only two who stayed around the feeders were Jemima and the bird we call Maybelline. They've been attached to each other since they were both juveniles, in mid-August. And the fact that Jem and Maybelline stayed around, apparently for the winter, when the rest cleared out is no accident. That will become clear in my next post.

When you see two blue jays this physically close to one another, you can be sure they're close in a relationship way, too. 

"If you suspect something, it's been going on for a long time." (M.B. Zickefoose)

In this photo, Jemima's in the back. That's Maybelline in the foreground. You will notice how much black Maybelline has around his eyes, and on the side of his face and neck. Phoebe named him back in July, noting that he was wearing an awful lot of makeup. Yes. I just called Maybelline a guy. Wearing guyliner, I guess. Because I'm 99% sure he is. Just as I'm pretty darn sure Jemima's a female. And no, I'm not changing Maybelline's name to Maybe or Malebelline or anything like that. It's a perfectly good name.

Maybelline started accompanying Jemima in mid-August. Who knows when jays form their pair bonds? I do. While they're just a few months old, as juveniles, that's when. At least these two did. 

Maybelline, Aug. 26, 2017, waiting for Jemima to load up at the Secret Studio Feeder

I cannot tell you how delighted I am that Jemima found a friend, nay, a mate! in August, and that they're still an item in November, hanging even more closely together. I almost never see one without the other popping into view. It just makes everything better, so much better that they're together. 

Jemima is perfectly comfortable being watched and photographed from inside the studio. She's never known anything else. But she is no longer tame.  I remember when, if I left the screen out of the studio window, she'd come into the house and raid the mealworm bins! I remember stuffing her back out the window, laughing. Nope, nope, nope, you're not coming in any more. God, how I'd love to have that problem now! She'd never come into the house now.

 Such sweet memories. That was only July. A lot changes in a few months when you're wild. 

I've devoted most of my time since late June to writing Jemima's story. It has as many shades and intricacies as her exquisite plumage, twists and turns and subplots. 

I started writing for publication in 1986. I've been writing and illustrating my own books since 2004. But I've never had a project like this one. It is a great and delicious luxury to tell one bird's story. To tell not the stories of 26 species, as I did in The Bluebird Effect; not 17 species, as in Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest; but the story of one singular bird. 

I get up every day and can't wait to get to my laboratory, where I sit and write and stare out the window and wait for Jemima. I hate going away. I even hate going into town. 

Don't want to close my eyes 

I don't want to fall asleep

'Cause I'd miss you, babe,

And I don't want to miss a thing.

Next: The Thing About Jemima