What's New Wednesday

Let me start today's post with what I saw out my window this morning as I was having B'fast. Besides a few snow flakes falling (and Monday it was in the 60's here in the North East) I happened to see the peculiar movements of a certain kind of bird. A bird I know I've only seen once before in real life and I consider myself an amateur birdwatcher, ever since the love of bird watching was instilled in me by my grandfather at a very early age. In fact the Bird Identifier book I have used to belong to him and he gave it to me. It's the Audubon Society's Field Guide to North American Birds, copyright 1977 and given to him by my Grandmother as a present.

I had seen this same bird a few weeks back, again from my bay window that I sit at to do my computer work, sitting on the railing but even though I keep my camera at hand it flew off before I could snap a photo to compare. I thought it was a Mockingbird, but was not sure. I've seen many a Catbird, which is a very musical bird in its own right. But I've never seen a mockingbird in real life. So I got out my Field Guide and looked it up. It looked a bit like the picture but some of the pictures from over 30 years ago are faded and not in the best light. But today he appeared on my front lawn and I got a chance to snap a few while he hopped back and forth behind my huge oak trees. I couldn't get a perfect side view but the views I did get were enough to compare to this online photo to assure me that I had identified it correctly.

And I had. Now there is a variety called the Northern Mockingbird, but as I said, I've never seen one before, which brought to mind something that I have seen on and off most recently. Birds in my back yard when they shouldn't be or around the local parks and lakes.

Birds have been created with a natural homing device in their DNA. This guides them through storms, being blown off course and even weather changes to find not only their destination, but to pinpoint it so exactly as to return back after thousands of miles in their migration to the same place where they were born. Not state or town mind you, but actually the same yard or field where they were hatched.

Now I have to do some research on this but I am pretty sure I read long ago that scientists have found that this homing device they are engineered with works in tandem with the earth itself, mainly it's magnetic field. I have been hearing a lot lately about the Mayan Calendar and the 2012 date, which we aren't far from. This is supposed to bring a cataclysmic event to our planet, none are certain exactly what that is. Some believe that the earth will actually shift on it's axis and that our magnetic field which holds everything into place has been deteriorating which is causing all kinds of troubles across the board. Science is great but I prefer to look to nature to show what is happening.

You might remember last year me telling you of our house wrens that build a nest on my back porch and how we watched them diligently building the nest together and then feeding their brood together, to the day that they fledged. I love how they return each year and will build very close to the old nest. But I have seen the wren, at least one of them here this winter, way past the time when they should have migrated. You see they winter in Mexico, only returning in spring to breed in the US. But this alerts me to what may be going wrong with their 'radar'. It seems a similar thing is happening with the bees disappearing. And some may say, 'so what?' But there is more to the Birds and the Bees than a childhood song, our lives may depend on theirs. Bees pollinate over 1/3 of the food you eat, did you know that? I will write more on this later since I have some other things to share with you later today (some pretty Jewels, so stop back!). But just giving out some food for thought for now.

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