Steller's jay

Further on, she discovered a Steller’s jay.

Today, it showed, he had spotted a Steller’s jay and a crow.

Some, like the carlottae subspecies of the darkly coloured Steller’s jay, underscore the fact that while much of the country was blanketed by glaciers 10,000 years ago, other pockets remained ice-free, allowing species to thrive and become genetically distinct from landlocked counterparts.

It was a once-in-a-morning foray onto my deck, and my photographic quarry was a male Steller’s jay: a common bird around my home near Lake Tahoe.

Yet each sighting of another species still seems to thrill him, whether that creeper, or a common Steller’s jay or a ruby-crowned kinglet.