A Lifeless Jay

So on my daily walk home from school, I usually come across at least one neat thing. Sometimes that thing is a rare bird in The Sudbury River. Sometimes it's a turtle breathing at the surface of the water. Occasionally i'll see my local Great Blue Heron launch from the reeds, and glide away from me. Today, that thing was unfortunately a dead bird. I at first thought it might have been fake. It wasn't. I rushed home, grabbed a plastic bag, and carefully scooped the stiff body into it. It was a little gross. I brought the bird down to the riverbank, so passing cars wouldnt stare at me wondering "Why the hell is that kid staring at a dead bird?"

It was disturbing to find, and sad to think about, but it's a rare thing to be able to see a Blue Jay so close up. Poor thing. Blue jays don't look like they belong in Massachusetts, they look like they belong in Brazil. I guess the need to attract a mate is more important than the need to camoflage in the Blue jay world.

I don't have the ornithology knowledge to give a solid theory, But I think the bird either died of injuries from a car accident, couldn't survive the blizzard, or passed away from old age. It almost certainly wasn't a predator, because the snow around the corpse was 100% smooth and untouched, meaning the bird must have fallen directly out of the sky. This is what the jay looked like when I found it:

...That's just nature though. If you can't survive, you wont.