The Thing About Jemima

Jemima came to me as an 11-day old nestling, dehydrated, starving and very sick. It was three days before she kept her eyes open, and I had to force-feed her a lot. I think she had been jostled out of the nest, and her parents judged her not worth trying to save. Jays are smart. People like me are dumb. We lead with our hearts.

From that period of deprivation,  when she went unattended for at least a day, she suffered an interruption in the growth of her flight feathers. And when they reached full length, some of them broke off at the weak spots, which are called fault bars. 

October 7, 2017. Missing primaries.

As a result, this bird is flying on a lot fewer feathers than she should have. As fate and biology would have it, blue jays retain their juvenile flight feathers until late summer of their second year. She won't molt the broken stubs of her juvenile flight feathers until August 2018. Until then, I pray the ones that remain hold. But there are no guarantees with wild things. More could break off at any time. The fault bars run across all of them.

August 2018 is a long time to hold your breath. But you may be sure I am holding my breath.

Maybelline (left) and Jemima, November 11, 2017

I count on Maybelline and the local winter flock of jays to watch out for Jemima. Not much gets past a blue jay. Almost nothing gets past seven of them.

Jemima still flies. She flies with difficulty, and she doesn't get much altitude, but she's learned to hop to the top of a tree before she takes off if she needs to cover a lot of open space. That gives her time to look out for hawks before she launches, too.  

November 11, 2017. Chicken in her grip.

I tell her that if she can make it until her feathers molt in, she's going to be a beast among beasts. She's going to be the strongest blue jay that ever lived. She already is.

I took this photo on October 15. I was outside, and while I stood with my back to the sun, Jemima landed on the Bird Spa, which I keep scrubbed and sparkling and disinfected--for her. I was so close to her that my shadow fell across her. And she turned her back on me and drank. That is trust, and it is as rare in wild birds as rare can be. It's the most beautiful thing I know. She's not sitting on my shoulder any more. But she'll turn her back to me and drink, and if you know anything about how birds think, you know what that means. I won't do anything to betray that beautiful trust. And that would include capturing her to take her in until her feathers molt. Not going to happen.

I have been fighting with myself for months about whether to tell you about Jemima's flight feathers, mostly because I didn't want to have to deal with the blowback and handwringing. But I finally decided to. I've come to detest secrets, and to question the necessity of keeping them. So, having told this one, I'd ask that you not pity her. Jemima is tough and strong. She doesn't need sympathy. She needs support, good food, and her flock.

I control what I can control. I can give her food and clean water. I never miss a day.  Cooked herbed chicken. Pork roast. Pecans, pine nuts. Peanuts. Corn. Sunflower hearts. She gets the good stuff, and I keep it coming. I'm doing everything I can to help her. Know that. Every day I'm privileged to lay out her breakfast is a gift. 

Every single day she survives, every day I'm granted to watch her interact with her flock and her mate is a gift. It would be stupid of me to wish she had a full set of flight feathers, but of course I do, every damn time I see her fly. And then I smack myself back to reality and say, "It is what it is. Work with it. Tell her story."

I didn't see Jemima from November 1-November 9. Her chicken went untouched. Well, almost untouched. There's a Carolina wren who's developed a taste for chicken. While I worried and imagined the worst about my blue angel, I diverted myself photographing this wee mite stealing Jemima's food.

Wren, eating bird.

Wren, contemplating the propriety of having eaten bird. omgwhathaveijustdone?

Deciding not to feel guilty about it. To have more. It was delish.

So you can imagine, not seeing Jemima for 8 days, the kinds of thoughts and fears that coursed through my mind. The conclusions I came to. Maybe she'd tried to migrate after all. No. She knows damn well she can't do that. Maybe that little sharp-shin got her. No. She's as big as he is. She'd fight back. 

My mind is the devil's playground, most of the time. I've had way more to process lately, to make OK, than I feel I can handle. I melted down on Days 6 and 7, just lost it. I said goodbye to her, too. And having let go (mostly),  I was OK on Day 8. I had to move on. What's my choice? No matter what happens to you, moving on is your only choice. 

As my wise,

 hilarious new friend Stephen Andrew Jones says, "Let go, or be dragged." It's my new mantra. More than one person can have the same mantra, right? 

And then, on the morning of November 9, eight days gone, Jemima plopped onto the Secret Studio Feeder as if she'd never left. 

 She glugged down her chicken and hid about a pound of whole corn and went BOOGABOOGA at the mourning doves and stood down a chipmunk and was completely herself and most of all HERE. Alive. Jemima was not dead. NOT DEAD!!

Trying and failing to get Peanut # 7 in her gular pouch for air transport to a secret hiding place in the tangle on the east hill. To get there, she flies along the side of the house and up to a telephone line. Re-adjusts the peanut load, then launches on a sustained flight that's easily 130' diagonally across the meadow. Not that I just went out and neurotically paced it off, or anything. Who'd do something like that?

Jemima, flying with a full load of peanuts. And not nearly enough wing feathers. Nov. 12, 2017

My point is, Jemima is making her way. Whether or not she's aeronautically sound or even "releasable" matters not. She's out there, released since June 11, and she's playing the hand she's been dealt. Well, aren't we all?

Maybelline, Nov. 12, 2017

I've told beautiful Maybelline to keep watch over Jemima, and he says he will. He wishes she would share some of that chicken. I tell him to help himself!  He answers that he's still working up the courage. But sitting two feet from me through a pane of glass is a very good start, Maybelline!

Jem and Maybelline hung around like dirty shirts Nov. 9-12. And then didn't show up Nov. 16 or 17. I'm waiting it out again. Trying not to obsess. I'm not good at not obsessing about this bird. 

So. Know that this situation is hard for me, know that I'm doing the best I can by her, and please consider that in your comments and suggestions.  I believe in this bird, and you should, too. No pity. No sympathy. And most of all, no handwringing! I can sit here and wring my hands dry, completely unassisted. You'd be amazed how good I am at it.

letgo,orbedragged letgo,orbedragged letgo,orbedragged

Send us your positivity and strength. Please save the rest.  If a hawk takes her tomorrow, hers is still going to be a hell of a story. I've told you about 10% of it. The rest will be in the book. Just before Jem showed back up, I signed a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to tell her amazing story. Because I was still in the middle of my JEMIMA'S DEAD!!! meltdown, it didn't really hit me until the next day how lucky I am to be able to do that. How lucky can you get? A publisher is waiting for your illustrated book about a blue jay? You get to write about, photograph and paint blue jays now? For a living??

Really, though, as if not having a contract would stop me...nothing could stop me, because Jemima has become My Thing.

Saving Jemima.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. October 2019. Be there. 

November 11, 2017. Full as a tick. She's not fat. She's big-boned.

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

Jemima Jay Update, August 22

Against all expectations and hopes, Jemima Jay is still coming in to visit and wolf down delicious food at the Secret Studio Feeder. I watch her every day, watch her interacting with the resident jays, and I see her being assimilated into their ranks. Nothing gives me more joy than knowing this precious bird is on her way to full jay-dom, unhampered by strange notions about Chet Baker and humans, and whether or not she is a dog, a person, or a jay. She's all blue jay!

Jem throws me a curveball every now and then. The latest was when she showed up bald, on August 13. Oh Jemima! What now?

In these photos, you can see that even as she goes suddenly bald (a condition called "catastrophic molt" by we ornithological types), the tiny pin feathers are already emerging in a fashionable blue Mohawk on her skull.

Upper: Aug. 21
Lower: Aug. 13. There's hope for this hideous bird!!

I did a little research and found that the pendulum of opinion on what causes baldness in blue jays and cardinals (the two backyard species that most often show it) has swung away from "Feather mites!" and toward "It just happens to some jays and cardinals."

For years, I repeated the "just so story" that feather mites caused this baldness, and the reason it was only on the head and neck was because the bird couldn't reach those places to preen away the mites. Well. Apparently, no one has ever recovered a follicular mite from a bald cardinal. And the fact that the pinfeathers are coming in like crazy even as the old feathers fall out argues against any infestation or disease. So now I answer, "Catastrophic head molt appears to be a normal molt process for some individual birds. The feathers will grow back." 

And sure enough, here's how she looked on August 21. Not fabulous, but not vulturine, either. Her feathers are coming in like gangbusters. Her neck feathers fell out right after the head feathers so I expect her gray-blue cowl and black collar to come in pretty soon. I can see pinfeathers there. 

It's always something with this bird, but I learn so much from her. She is my teacher, my muse, my joy. 

When anyone she knows comes home up the driveway, Jemima sounds a great clamor of Jay! calls. She tootles and chirrups. It's so wonderful to be welcomed thus.

And when it thunders she yells her head off and heads for the prune hedge where she's always gone in the rain. 

Eating a pecan bit. I cook up minced chicken and brown rice, and offer her sweet corn, raspberries, blueberries, watermelon, pecan halves and walnuts, too. I find that if I crumble the pecans and walnuts she'll hang around longer. If I put out halves, she just absconds with them and I don't get a visit with her. 

When Phoebe came home from her summer job in August, I had little doubt that Jemima noted that. She is always watching us out in the yard, watching me in the garden. She may not come down and steal snap peas from me, but she knows I'm there and keeps tabs. So two mornings later, when Phoebe got up early enough to see Jem at the studio feeder, Jemima saw her through the window. 

She began to tootle excitedly and give the little chimplike hit hit hit calls that jays use when they're talking to each other. She came down to the open studio window, but she didn't eat. She stood up as tall as she could and made eye contact with Phoebe, her favorite girl. She hopped up on the windowsill, as if to come inside. We held our breath, gasped. She thought better of hopping into the room, but kept tootling. As she was almost always silent at the feeder, this was a big deal. Phoebe spoke to her and greeted her and told her how happy she was to see her beautiful blue angel. I had my phone on Video, but unbeknownst to me, it hadn't started recording.  I missed the whole thing, including Phoebe's tears on being so clearly recognized, acknowledged and welcomed after being gone since mid-June. It was so, so sweet. And it will live only in our memories.

 However this is still one of the best-documented blue jays on the planet. I've got lots of other videos!

Lately, Jem has been showing up with a pal. As luck would have it, this juvenile jay is the most distinctive looking blue jay I've ever seen. We've no idea what sex it is, but with that heavy eye makeup, we thought it might be a girl. Hey, we've got a 50% chance of being right. Phoebe named her Maybelline.  Phoebe and her dad are the Namers in this family. 

Craptastic shot, I know--she was in mid-leap, and the light was bad.

This is somewhat better. Just look at the black line over the white eyebrow--very unusual.  The thick heavy black line right through the eye. And--wonder of wonders-- the black line around the eye! To me, she looks like a caricature. Just a bit too adorable. But I adore this bird!

Just to compare facial markings, here's a portrait of my beloved one-legged Peg, whom many of you will remember from years past (2014-2015). Peg had a very, very white face for a blue jay, and she was distinctive in her own way, too. I'm so glad I had a chance to love and help Peg for two winters. She primed me for loving Jemima the way I do. And Jemima has opened the world of blue jays to me as no one else could. I have great hope of being able to distinguish at least some of my blue jays by facial markings, the way I've been able to distinguish some of the deer around here. It won't be easy, but I'm up for the challenge. My camera is my best ally in that pursuit.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that all is well, if a bit ragged, in Jemimaland, and I'm deep into my relationship with and study of this extraordinary individual. I know it will probably end, at least for the winter, when she migrates in September or October, so I'm holding on to every moment with her and her growing clan. Peg taught me that the blue jays who come here in November are a different cohort from the summer breeders. It's probable that the winter birds come from much farther north, and they may displace our breeders, who move south in fall. Come April, the northern birds head back to their boreal breeding grounds, and our summer jays return from wherever they spent the winter. Oh how I'd love to know where Jemima goes, if she does leave. She's got a heap of feather growing to do before she does!

This is a very special video, made August 20. It's one of those serendipitous videos that quite accidentally has a little plot to it. You can see Maybelline's eye makeup even through the window. 

Isn't that sweet?

This one, made today (August 22) is even more interesting. Jem comes down and fills her crop with chicken and rice. Leaves the feeder with an enticing chunk of chicken. What does Maybelline do? Tries to grab that chunk, then begs from Jemima!! Ha ha ha!! Nice try, Maybelline. Her little begging calls are so dear, but Jem doesn't fall for it. So Maybelline flirts with getting into the feeder by herself. Chickens out at the last minute.

 I think it's just a matter of time before Maybelline conquers her fear of me and helps herself to this wonderful repast. She's welcome to it!

Yes, I'm the Crazy Jay Lady now. And what a privilege it is to be accepted in their ranks, to be permitted to peek into their lives and puzzle over their doings. I thought you'd like a Jemima Jay update. If I've been quiet lately, it's because I'm busy with my blue jay studies.