Never too blue

True blue or too blue? Too blue to cry? Too blue to be true? Finding out who’s blue enough? Blue Bombers! Blue jeans! Blue Jays?

Always in a flap and full of noise about it, that would be blue jays for you! Look out any window and the sky around here is busy with them, no matter the season. They never seem to go away... at least, not for very long. A flash of blue and a clatter - squawk! - and life is full of significance. See them hanging upside down as they steal seeds from the neighbours’ sunflowers, plush, blue coats crazing as they perform their gymnastics.

“Many blue-feathered birds” look blue, not because of dye in their feathers but because of the way the feathers are put together. Light refracts as it passes through the thousands of filaments that make up a feather. The brilliant blue vanishes if the feather is crushed because the structure no longer breaks light to show blue.

Only drawings and paintings seem to capture the brilliance of blue birds. Maybe this structural colour has something to do with why photographs of kingfishers and herons usually look so dull and gray. Possibly the photographer is challenged to catch them in light strong enough to show their splendour.

No more often than once or twice a year, I catch sight of a kingfisher zigzagging up the brook. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to when it appears: I’ve seen it at all times of day. The vivid flash of blue is what calls attention, but, over the years of brief sightings, I’ve begun to recognize the kingfisher voice. It’s not much like the recorded sound on the Wikipedia kingfisher page. Last week, it was the gravelly cry - somewhere between the chuckling squawk of a blue jay and the cackle of a crow, and more musical than either - that drew me to the brook just in time to see it flicker out of sight downstream.

Up the rise, around the bend and over the old train bridge and across the Mill Brook my steps carried me, just like every Saturday morning when I get the chance. Milkweed pods were starting to burst. Leaves on the vine that throws a net over the trees here were glowing scarlet. Rose hips contrasted red against the green - still! - leaves. My nose prickled with the fragrance of newly-mown grass and new-fallen leaves.

Stilted movement further up the brook caught my eye. In sharp silhouette strobing against the slant of sunbeams, a great blue heron strode through the water, its knees bending backwards. It froze when it caught sight of me, as did I when I saw it. Fishing, however, is serious business and the heron soon returned to the task, deadly beak aiming side-to-side as it hunted for its breakfast. My appointment lost some of its urgency: watching the heron is rare enough to warrant being late.

It’s true: there can never be too much blue in my sky!