Noisy, mean, and bullies at the feeders, but nevertheless among our most beautiful of native birds.
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Canon 60D, Canon 70-300 IS USM Zoom @ 180mm, f/6.7, ISO 1000, 1/125 sec. Processed in ACR and PSE 2020 for exposure and color. Topaz De-noise applied.
Very lovely with wonderful detail! Yours are much prettier than our aptly-named Scrub Jays.
I’m wondering about slightly darkening the highlight in the UL. It’s very pretty but that’s the problem with it! Could also be worth the effort to darken the branch coming out of the head.
I didn’t notice that spot in the ULC until you pointed it out, @Diane_Miller. Now I can’t take my eyes off it…I fixed it and darkened that branch. I tried to just remove it, but I kept leaving artifacts. I’ll repost after changes. Thanks!
Nice catch of this Jay Terry. Good details on the bird and the color looks good to me. I find these birds spooky and tough to photograph so good job on the capture. Too bad about the branch coming from behind the head. I could see removing the round highlight in front of the bird’s beak. A fine catch and pleasing image.
Thanks, Allen. Yeah, wish that branch was gone but, what do you do? Darn birds just don’t take direction very well.
A very good image of this jay, Terry. I don’t find the branch that bothersome in the repost and with the smaller branches coming off it, it would tale a lot of work to remove tracelessly.
Thanks, Dennis. I agree the branch isn’t too objectionable. I tried several different ways to remove it, and kept getting artifacts, so finally decided it’s a bird, on a branch (where they often are), live with it! 
Nice looking bird. Read the comments about the branch. I find it really distracting. With a few minutes using content aware fill in PS and some very minor low opacity cloning, I removed it to this point. Seeing it without the branch changes the feel of the image completely for me.
Good job, Keith. I could never get it that clean in PSE 2020.
Keith’s edits work well for this image. and taming down thebright spot also helped. Blue jays are dirt common, but find them to be most challenging to get out in the open. You did a good job capturing this one. Well done…Jim
