This has me wondering.....

Day before yesterday I was enjoying another varied and fun post from Philip of East Side Patch, wherein he was describing, among other adventures, seeing and snapping a close up shot of a baby jay that had apparently flown the coop.  Or nest, rather.

He reported the jay was relatively unconcerned with his attention though it did have its limits.  After posing for a couple of patented ESP blog close ups, the baby jay made its way over to safer, or at least less populated with paparazzi territory.

Yesterday, I was out to sweep off our front porch, partaking in that annual frustration fest otherwise known as trying to keep ahead of the oak tree pollen piles, when I noted, underneath a small table to the side of our door, a concentrated pile of another sort.  Hmmm.  It looked like.... bird poop?

I leaned over to get a closer look (yup, that's me in a nutshell folks, there is what looks like poop on the porch and I LEAN IN to get a closer look out of curiosity).  In so doing I startled yet another baby jay, this one not quite ready for prime time flying.  It gave out an unearthly squawk of terrific volume and starting hop-skip-jumping down towards the driveway.

I managed to get this one shot from afar, not wanting to distress the young bird any more than being grounded while its Momma was in the tree yelling (support? accusations? directions?).

Later on while my daughter and I were out appreciating the weather and the blooms out front, we overheard a conversation between a father and his young daughter, walking over to the neighborhood park.  He was clearly fielding questions about baby birds that had fallen out of their nests.  She was remarking, "when I fall out of MY bed the first thing I want to do is get right back in!".

This has me wondering.  Do Blue Jay nests come with built-in ejector seats?