This is an original oil painting by Ruth Housley on a 16x20 Linen Stretched Canvas. I have taken photos of Blue Jays and have wanted to paint one for a while. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed painting it.

The big noisy blue jay is one of the most colorful of the wild birds that have responded favorably to civilization and become common in the shade trees of eastern towns, but it is essentially a woodland creature and is still most abundant in open oak and beech forests. After breeding, jays gather in flocks that do much to enliven the fall woods with their calls and flashes of blue.
The blue jay is about three quarters vegetarian--acorns, beechnuts, and corn being its staple food. During summer its diet becomes preponderantly insectivorous. Jays bury more acorns and beechnuts than they can eat and are therefore important agents in planting oak and beech forests.
Their voice is extremely varied: harsh calls, a trumpeting whistle, a scream like a red-shouldered hawk, a flicker-like call, and a song of soft warbles and twitters.
They make their nests in a tree crotch or on branches near the main trunk up about 10 or 15 feet made of sticks and grass and other softer material at the center to form a cup. The 4 to 6 buff to greenish eggs are spotted with brown, most heavily at the large end.

Proverbs 27:8 "As a bird wandereth from his nest, sos is a man that wandereth from his place."