Marshallah

What a nice day today was. Sure, I had to spend time at the mall Christmas shopping and it was rather dismal outside, but I also added a new bird to the list of those I've seen in Brimfield. The bird was a juvenile Red-headed Woodpecker. That makes 161 species I've seen in Brimfield and it means that I've seen seven species of woodpecker in town. As a matter of fact, the first bird of each of these species that I saw in Massachusetts this year was in Brimfield. All pretty fun facts, making me enjoy all the more the simple beauty of a single one of God's wondrous creatures.

One of the first things that I've done most days of Advent this year is to watch an on-line video devotion sponsored by the United Church of Christ. Today's devotion was bird related. You can watch it here. Rev. Panagore shares some interesting facts about birds and then shares an interesting word that he learned in Turkey marshallah which means "behold the marvelous works of God." That's exactly what watching birds is all about.

December Ticks

Nothing like a good double-entendre for a title; yes, I actually had a tick crawling on me after a traipse through a wooded area on the second day of December! There is something very wrong with that picture! And that is the theme of this post. On the left you will see something wrong with a picture. What is wrong is that I should have taken the real camera with me today instead of relying on my cell phone camera. In any case, that smaller goose in the center of the picture is a Cackling Goose. Yes, the bird that claimed me by its naming is now officially a tick on my life list. Unfortunately, this very obliging bird was in Branford, Connecticut, some 80 miles too far south to make my Massachusetts list. I did, however, check out the report of the same species in Southwick on my way home, but to no avail. Something is wrong with this picture! Of my 391 life birds, I have only gotten 275 of them in Massachusetts, although my Massachusetts life list is 363. That's right, there are nearly a hundred species of birds that I've seen in my lifetime that I saw in some other state before seeing them in my home state.

Another thing wrong with the picture today was the reason I went to Connecticut to begin with, that being what turned out to be life bird number 390, a Calliope Hummingbird. How this tiny visitor from the west has survived these cold temperatures, let alone getting all the way to the east coast is a great mystery. It was a beautiful creature and I wish it well, but I don't have great hopes for its long-term survival unless it figures out very quickly which way is south.

These out of the ordinary opportunities are what drives much of the obsessive joy of birdwatching. If everything were always normal, never changing, never surprising, then we would never have any reason to have hope. While I don't have high hopes for the lost vagrant hummingbird, I have to remind myself that it survived getting here, so it has an outside chance of surviving to get somewhere else where it can safely remain. God always gives us a slightly out of focus picture, showing us that some things just aren't right. BUT, there always remains the hope that if God can make things the way they are, God can also make things better. I don't pretend to know why God works the way God does, but I do choose to believe that part of the way God works is to use me to make the changes necessary. I witnessed one of those changes today. A couple of people watching the hummingbird struggle to get to the feeder that was swaying due to the wind decided to tie it to a stake. This had an immediate impact on the birds ability to feed. Who knows, that simple, inspired act may be the very thing that saves this bird's life. Often it isn't the extraordinary effort that is needed, just simple works of kindness.