Blue Jays are not subtle. They announce themselves. They argue with squirrels, mob hawks twice their size, and will absolutely hog your feeder without a trace of shame. They are, by most measures, a lot.

Blue Jays are corvids, which puts them in the same family as crows and ravens—some of the most intelligent birds on the planet. They cache food, remember where they put it, and have been observed using tools. They communicate in complex ways, mimicking the calls of hawks so effectively that other birds will scatter from a feeder, leaving the jay to eat in peace. Whether that counts as deception or just good strategy probably depends on how you feel about blue jays generally.

Up close, they're also one of the most beautiful birds in North America. That blue isn't actually pigment—it's structural color, the feather barbs bending light in a way that produces cyan so vivid it almost looks artificial. I kept a few jay feathers on my desk while I painted this, just to make sure I was getting it right. There's a remarkable amount of them in my neighborhood and I usually find at least one feather once a week. Like their frenemies the Northern Cardinals, they stick around all winter and their plumage is a welcome contrast to the grays and browns of a usually snowless, mid-Atlantic winter.

American Winterberry is one of the few native plants that holds its berries through the winter, which makes it critical for birds when almost everything else is gone. The orange variety felt right here—I wanted the cold-weather version of spectacular. No red and green. Just blue and orange, loud and unapologetic, exactly like the bird.