Bird Watching

I finally did something on New Year's day that I had wanted to do for a few years now. I got in on some of the winter bird count. Mike North, who coordinates the event, put me in his car along with some other experienced birders from the local Audubon society and we drove around our assigned section, north of Pillager.
We especially looked for houses with bird feeders. We would get out our binoculars and see what we could see. But the less obvious bird locations were more fun. It was a cold day (about 9 degrees) so we weren’t driving with the car windows full open, but Mike would drive with his window down a crack and in spite of the sounds that cars make with engines running and tires rolling, Mike would occasionally say, “I heard a chickadee.” He would slow down, stop or maybe back up. We would open more windows; and ears that were trained and alert would pick out one or two of the chickadee sounds. I wouldn’t hear a thing. How could they? Unfailingly they would eventually spot the little bird or two. I usually found the birds only after some very direct pointing.
Other times one of them would spot something flying up in the sky. I would look up and see nothing. By the time I saw the fleeting specks the rest in the car knew what kind of birds we had, simply by noting the way they flew. Then they would tell us to look for some other kind of birds that sometimes mingled and mixed into that particular flock.
One time a large flock of snow buntings flew past us and then landed in some trees. Mike noted that it was strange because snow buntings didn’t usually do that. It looked normal to me. Don’t all birds just land in trees? I did my homework later and found that they preferred northern wind swept prairies, tundra and barren places.
The afternoon went on like that and I was impressed by what trained eyes could see - while I missed, most of the time, what there was to see. Granted, I do have some hearing loss for high pitches, and my glasses are about 3 or 4 years old, but I think there is another reason. We see what we are prepared to see, trained to see, experienced to see.
I was getting better at it by the end of the day. What would years of that watching be able to perceive?
Now make a leap of faith, or to the topic of faith. My spiritual alertness and ability to see and seek God’s presence probably needs that same kind of desire and attention, training and preparation. What would be it be like to get with others and go out for a winter epiphany count, searching for signs of God!
I have a book by a theologian named Patrick Henry: on pages 16 and 17 in The Ironic Christian’s Companion: Finding the Mark’s of God’s Grace in the World, he talks about what some people would call “God Sightings” but relates it to another bird watcher's term. A lot of birds are just identified as L.B.J. "Little brown jobs." Its used for when we are looking at something but beyond that we aren’t too sure. That fits my theology and ornithology!
I hope to do better with my bird watching and my God watching. Even the L.B.J.’s are good for now. I'll keep looking, learning from others and checking the field guide books.
I can't imagine how much is out there to see. As one of the bird watchers said, “Winter would be pretty dull without the Chickadees.”

ALL OF HUMAN LIFE is a precinct of epiphany. But the gift half understood, the hint half guessed, is that it is ours to receive amidst the most mundane of human realities — the daily round of life’s ordinary experiences. God is there — and here.

Yes, especially here, if only we could see.

- Michael Downey
“Gift’s Constant Coming”
Weavings Journal

From Weavings Journal, November/December 1999