Yosemite Birds

Red winged black bird takes flight. ©2012 James McGrew

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Red winged black bird takes flight. ©2012 James McGrew

$Steller's Jay perches on a rock and looks over my shoulder at the painting on which I worked depicting Upper Yosemite Fall. ©2012, James McGrew<br /> <br /> Members of the Corvidae, these birds also share some remarkable intelligence of their larger black colored relatives, crows and ravens. Steller's jays also exhibit beautiful plummage. However, the blue is not really pigment (a molecule that absorbs certain wavelengths and reflects other wavelengths). Instead the feathers refract blue wavelengths in certain directions. This is why you can pick up a blue feather and it appears blue in one direction but as you rotate the feather, it may change from brown to dark gray.$

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