different from blue jays?

Nice photo, but misidentified.

from the west coast and the jays there are so spectacular that they couldn't imagine a blue jay without the crest?

CA have Steller jays?

This definitely looks like a blue jay, with the crest flattened back.

Jays and magpies have a lot in common, being in different branches of the Corvid family, but there aren't any magpies that look this much like a blue jay, at least not to my knowledge.

do they live around northwest Arkansas?

We're from Illinois, and we took a trip through South Dakota, Wyoming (including Yellowstone), and Montana, and then back home through Colorado and Nebraska. In Montana, I started noticing these big black and white birds all over the place. Like these guys:



I googled and found out they were black-billed magpies, a bird that is common west of the Mississippi but not seen in the eastern third of the country.

such flocks were everywhere.