This morning when I was making coffee, I looked out the back window to see a bunch of pteradactyls at the feeders making a bunch of racket! Ok, ok, they're actually Stellar Jays, but we think they look like their prehistoric ancestors! By the way, did you know they can imitate the sound of other birds?! They will often mimic the sound of a hawk's cry to frighten other birds away! It amazed me when I heard a hawk just outside one day and found a Stellar's Jay doing a perfect imitation! We love these birds, even though they rampage around like a bunch of skateboard punks! :D

These birds are native to the Western United States, as far north as Alaska and down to Nicaragua. If you would like to know more about these birds, Wiki has a great page here: Wikipedia: Steller's Jay

(In this image, I used one of Topaz Lab's b/w filters--they have a wonderful suite of filters for black and white and they're not all black! Many cool duo-tones and neat vignetting styles like this one I used here. This picture was taken through our kitchen window and it suffered from noise problems. With DeNoise and the use of one of their cool b/w filters, along with a touch of detail filter on just the birds, I think it turned out ok! :)