The Day of the Blue Jays

This has to be the day of the Blue Jay --- I awoke early to a cloudy dreary day. I wandered over to the skylight hoping that I would find a warbler in the tree.
Turning to start the computer for the day, I heard a sound at the window and discovered a Blue Jay, head cocked, looking down at me. Since my skills in “BlueJay” are deficient, I of course, had to guess what he was saying – but it seemed he wanted me to come outside. I padded bare foot down the stairs and quietly out to the deck. To my delight the yard was awash with birds. Two hen turkeys wandering the lawn, goldfinches decorating all the trees, robins working in the grasses down the hillside, chickadees, titmice and nuthatches working their way through the trees, whitethroats calling from the thicket.
Morning doves flew to the phone line where they cooed to one another… The Jay hopped to the porch railing, giving a musical bugling call which was immediately answered from somewhere to the west of the house. In moments the clearing, the trees, the grasses were filled with blue jays. Where they came from – I have no idea they seemed to simply materialize out of the air.

The Blue Jay

No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity

Pursuing winds that censure us
A February day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.

The snow and he are intimate;
I 've often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity,

I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky,
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.

The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder -- terse and militant --
Unknown, refreshing things;

His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.
--- Emily Dickinson