blue jay (element) and copyright

After 3 false starts, and almost two weeks of blue air... I finally have a 18 inch Blue Jay 'element' that I can live with... for tonight anyway. There are a couple of passages I'm not completely happy with - which knowing me, means that tomorrow I'll be back at it. I may say that I'm a recovering perfectionist, but times like these remind me that recovering is not recovered!
This guy is a collage element, and part of the oak leaves painting I've been working on the last few weeks. The reference photo is courtesy of 'birdlady' one of the regulars on a bird watchers chat room I frequent. Thank you again, birdlady.

One of the marvels of the Internet is the generosity of the folks out there.
As an artist I try very hard to abide by the copyright laws, and only use reference photo's when I have the blessing of the photographer who took the photo.
I know that not everyone is so scrupulous, and there are a lot of gray areas, but I would not want my work 'stolen', and I treat the photog's work as I would my own.
It would be easier to just take what I wanted, or to use the photo's instead of painting the elements, but that's not the way I want to do it.
A couple of weeks ago I mused about whether I should try to do a painting a week for e:bay, since I'm still working on the same painting I started then, I guess the answer to the weekly time line is -no. At lest not at Christmas, perhaps once the silly season is over....