Dickie Birds

Birders have an endearing term for those small common birds that flit and twitter in the brush and on low branches in the woods, dickie birds. These are the birds encountered on any and every trip into the field, chickadee, titmouse, nuthatch, and goldfinch being the most common. Dickie birds are so common that they are easily taken for granted. Many times when I make a list for the day I have to stop and think hard to remember if I actually encountered any dickie birds that day. While I find it hard to believe that there were none, I often cannot specifically remember one.

Although Jesus didn’t use the term, he was certainly talking about dickie birds when he asked the rhetorical question, “are not two sparrows sold for a penny?”(Matthew 10:29) He was not talking about birds that were being sold for sacrifice in the temple; they must have been for eating. A sparrow could not have provided very much meat, and at less than a penny they were nearly worthless. Interestingly, the very species that Jesus spoke of is likely the common, and pesky, sparrow that we know in our cities, the House Sparrow, passer domesticus. So this is one ancient metaphor that translates well to our time. Consider how easy it is to overlook a sparrow. Some day just try counting how many House Sparrows you see. I’m sure that you will be surprised at how many there are around you that you never noticed before. Yet, Jesus assures us, not one of these tiny creatures goes unnoticed by God. Indeed, every single hair on your head is counted! That is the nature of this God we worship. The logic is that if God cares for such small things, insignificant to and overlooked by us, then God’s care for each of us must be so incredibly great.

The corollary to this message is that since we are so loved by God we are free to be like God in showing the same compassion to others, even those (indeed, especially those) who are the least.

Impurity

Recently Blue-winged Warblers have returned to their breeding grounds. I’ve been hearing their two-part “bee-buzzzzz” song in a number of places around town. Each time I hear the song I make an effort to see the bird on the off chance that it is not a Blue-winged Warbler. The reason being that sometimes the closely related Golden-winged Warbler will sing the same song. The reverse can also be the case. Unfortunately it is usually safe to assume that whatever song one hears, it is a Blue-winged Warbler singing it, as Golden-winged Warblers are in the decline and may in fact be heading toward extinction. Curiously, the reason Golden-winged Warblers are disappearing is completely natural; they are being bred out of existence by the Blue-winged Warblers. Hybrids between the two species are common enough that they are named and depicted in field guides. These Lawrence’s and Brewster’s Warblers are capable of reproduction and Blue-winged Warbler genes are winning the battle.

With the mixing of the gene pool it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a pure Golden-winged Warbler. And once the impurity works its way in, purity can never be achieved again. Think about it, 99 and 44/100% pure is still impure. Picture a single drop of food coloring in a glass of water, once it goes in it spreads throughout the whole glass eventually. And isn’t it especially true that most of the time motives are something less than pure? This past week, one reason I was checking out the songs of warblers was that I wanted to attempt what is called, in birding parlance, a Century Run. That is, I wanted to locate 100 species of birds within Brimfield in a single 24 hour day. My motivation for this quixotic quest was similar to what long distance runners or mountain climbers have: the thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of personal achievement. Or at least that was part of my motivation. Truth be told, I was also highly motivated by competition. Last week, while I was competing in another birding marathon, the World Series of Birding (where my team broke its own record finishing ninth with 191 species), three local birders attempted a Brimfield Century Run. They fell short by four species. I was determined to beat that. In the end I ended up two species shy of their mark.

So what can be done about impurity? Can any of us ever have pure motives, even when we set out to do good? Honestly, I don’t think that we can ever make such claims as perfection is simply beyond our human capacity. Fortunately, God has a plan to deal with our impurities. Unfortunately, we won’t like it. A number of scriptural passages describe trials and tribulations as God’s way of refining us. The metaphor refers to the act of refining precious metals by melting them, removing the impurities that rise to the surface (known as dross), and then repeating again and again until the metal is pure. So we should expect to face troubles if we want to be the person God wants us to be. The wonderful truth about this process is that through it we reflect more and more of God. For you see, the way a refiner knows when a metal is finally pure is when he can see his reflection in it.

The Forest for the Trees

It is an open secret that I am what British birders would call a twitcher. I will take off for unfamiliar territory in search of a reported bird that I have never seen before. So I was twitching on Patriot’s Day when I took off for Deep River, Connecticut hoping to see the reported Swallow-tailed Kite. This was my third attempt to see this magnificent bird. Unmistakable in flight, with its long forked tail, striking black and white coloring, and its preference for snacking on insects at treetop height, I knew that I would have no trouble identifying this beautiful bird.

Thus, I stood accused when the local resident walked up and began subtly chiding the congregation of birders lost in their compulsion to see a single bird. Still, his monologue was fraught with irony. He practically ranted that we twitchers were oblivious to all the rest of the beauty around us, obsessed as we were with a tick on our lists. I’m not sure how he drew this conclusion, especially considering that I had just been wondering about the species of insect that was hatching and providing the food for the kite. Nor did he seek a dialogue during which I could have told him how my first foray in search of this bird had led me serendipitously to witness a fascinating dogfight between an Osprey and a juvenile Bald Eagle. But the greatest irony came when he told me of a close encounter he had had with a fisher while he was hunting. Not only did I have a nearly identical encounter recently, but it happened while I was doing what he was doing, that is, twitching is simply another way of utilizing our nearly instinctual urge to hunt. So he was showing how he too was guilty of what he was accusing me of, not seeing the forest for the trees.

It is a sad reality that it is all too easy to lose perspective when one’s focus is narrow. The current alleged Red State/Blue State dichotomy in our nation is a good example of the danger of a too tight single focus. And when we set our mind on one thing alone, the blinders that we put on can quickly lead us to self-justifications of unacceptable behavior. Birders have suddenly been presented with just such an ethical dilemma with the revelation that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is in fact not extinct but it is possible to score the ultimate twitch in Arkansas. Unfortunately, finding this bird would not be a completely passive activity. The very act of seeking this bird could harm its habitat sufficiently to cause its supposed extinction to become a reality.

Failing to see the interconnectedness of all people, and upsetting the delicate web of all life, are uniquely modern sins that we all too easily and all too often justify or ignore. Let’s commit ourselves to saving the forests, figuratively and literally, one tree at a time.