Bird Watching: Any Idea What This Jay Is Doing?, 1 by DreamOfSpring

DreamOfSpring wrote:
While I was out pruning some plants in my side yard, I noticed this Blue Jay at the back of my neighbor's yard. The bird dropped (flew) down out of a tree at the forest's edge (just behind and out of the pic). It landed on the slope of a drainage berm where it spread itself out as seen in the pic below. (Sorry for the poor quality of the pic. The bird was some distance away and I had to max out all forms of zoom to get a pic at all.)

The bird lay motionless in this position for maybe 5-10 minutes during which I saw no other birds, no predators, no humans, no creature of any kind bothering or otherwise interacting with the bird. Just as I was starting to worry about the bird - as it hadn't moved for a while - it finally moved its head to "scratch" at its shoulder with it beak and then got up and flew back up into the tree.

Any clue as to what the bird was doing? (Just naturally curious about these things.)