Story
A smalled winged creature with blue wings, reflecting the cold of the frozen landscape. - Dolan Geiman
The ice was melting. Slowly, but it was disappearing, and as it melted it filled ditches and sinkholes creating creeks, rivers, lakes, oceans. It had been a long time in the cold, this round planet, wrapped by the blanket of a seemingly never-ending ice age. But slowly the life was returning, and in the midst of this new spring for the planet a new species emerged: a small winged creature with blue wings reflecting the cold of the frozen landscape. It had a voice like a rusty chain but could think like its crow brethren and had a penchant for finding tree nuts. Its appetite rested mainly on the giant oaks where it was born, and as it flew from field to mountain, it carried in its beak handfuls of acorns, which it buried for later consumption. Many of these acorns were forgotten and never eaten, and later sprouted into the oak savannas and dense forests that fill expansive vistas of this vast landscape. If this sounds like a creation myth, it’s far from that. The blue jay, with his sharp crest and ability to mimic many other birds and even humans, is one of the most intelligent birds to arrive after the ice age. In Colorado it is surely one of the most beautiful - its beauty rivaled only by the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. The next time you see this azure cloaked avian friend, give him a nod, knowing that he’s worked a long time to be where he is today.
Story of the Colorado Blue Jay, Dolan Geiman 2014
