Waiting for the Word

Every birder has to decide what rules will govern his or her lists. For example, I will count birds that I’ve heard but not seen, others will only count those that they get good looks at. There are two birds that are currently “asterisks” on my year list. Ironically, both showed up in Northampton this winter. The first was a bird whose identity is still up in the air, the second is a bird that may not have been completely wild.

The first bird may have been a hybrid between Thayer’s Gull and “Kumlien’s” Gull. I definitely saw the bird in question, but don’t have the experience or expertise to settle the identification question. The second bird was by nearly all accounts a Trumpeter Swan. The problem with counting this bird is that there is a chance that it may have flown here not from traditional breeding grounds for this species, but from a population that has been reintroduced to the wild. So I have decided that for the sake of listing these two birds I will abide by the decision of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee (MARC). This committee examines the evidence as submitted to it and renders a decision. I have not always chosen to abide by their rulings. Once I saw what I am sure was a Henslow’s Sparrow but my report was not accepted by MARC. Needless to say, the sparrow stayed on my list. Sometimes personal experience trumps external authorities.

This made me think about the Bible. The books of the Bible were written by a variety of authors and gathered by the faithful. There has not always been agreement about which books belong in the canon and which don’t. Thus, there are the books of the Apocrypha which are accepted by Roman Catholics but not by Protestants. Each of us has to approach the Bible with our own “rules.” Some will attempt to take every word literally; others will see the truth of stories in the message more than the content. Regardless of your own approach, you are beholden to mere mortals who penned the words and other people who chose to call them holy. We all must accept the human factor in the process. Sometimes we all find ourselves choosing personal experience over external authorities, but at all times we should be carefully waiting for the word…of God.