Blue jays are bold, beautiful, inquisitive, and smart backyard visitors. They are some of the biggest, brassiest, and boldly colored visitors to most backyard feeders. While I don’t seem to find the opportunities to photograph them very often, they are one of the most entertaining to watch, especially their interaction with other species. Blue jays are known for their intelligence. They’re part of the corvid (crow) family, and they’re very smart.