Isabella Rossellini stops in her tracks, her eyes fixed on a California scrub jay. Its feathers are deep azure blue, its belly a soft gray-brown. Perched on a security guard’s finger, it sits near the historic Japanese house at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

The guard is feeding the bird a peanut as a hungry squirrel looks on, tail bushy with anticipation. The squirrel too is fed a nut. “How did you tame the jay?” Rossellini asks after the bird soars away in a flash of electric-blue flutter. The man smiles. “She knows me,” he says.