Reflections Part 2

We were sitting bird watching one day when a couple of new faces showed up. This sent me scurrying to the computer to look them up for I wasn’t sure what kind of bird they were. That just shows how well I knew my birds but I was getting better. It turned out that we now had the common grackles and a purple finch or two. The finch was quite pretty with his purple vest and even the grackle was handsome dressed all in black. About this time I should mention that we also had three pairs of ground doves. Once in a while they would perch on the tree with the goldfinches, but mostly you had to look at the ground to see them foraging around, a thing I could overlook sometimes. Just like the juncos.

TV time again. Today I was watching a baseball game, shucks another loss, can’t seem to get any luck with the idiot box. At times I wonder why we bother with the cable TV for there never seems to be anything decent on and the news can be so depressing.

It was time for the leaves to change as we approached fall, and it was about this time that we got our latest new family members in the form of some nuthatches and three downy woodpeckers. I was a little surprised, because I had given up hope of ever seeing them in our back garden. This was because earlier we had put out a suet feeder and had no action, but here they were.
Even now, late in the year and already started into winter, we still have the woodpeckers, nuthatches and the black capped chickadees. Surprisingly, we still have an abundance of goldfinches. I thought they would have migrated south by now however; their coats seem to have changed and they look like they now sport a winter coat. Of course this would be so nice if they stay for the winter months. Unfortunately, the appearances of the blue jays are now getting more and more scarce and we had the one visit with the mystery birds. The closest we could find was that they sure looked like brown thrashers, but we haven’t determined that at this point.


In the political spectrum politicians jockeying for position, for it seems that their concerns lean more towards their own ambitions and personal agenda’s, rather than the welfare of the country and its peoples best interests. Everybody is blaming everyone else for the woes of the World. Often I wonder, just who is running the country, or even, are they?

I cast my thoughts and eyes back to the window, it was so much more simple to just enjoy the pleasures of nature. Some of the birds seem to be so tame that at times, they keep coming right up to the window and looking in on us, almost as if they are telling us the feeders are getting low again. I thought just how lucky we were to have this so available, and at the same time, thinking of the poor devils in the trouble torn countries, so many dead or injured, too many homeless, and no food or water. It is so sad. I guess that’s when I started thinking more of the simple wonders of nature and the apparent destructive actions of mere man.

Strange really when one thinks of it; there is always lots of talk of technology and progress, with man forever coming up with new ideas to make life easier for people.
Yet it would really seem more like, forever making things much worse overall in the world, in regard to the environment and wildlife in general.
Oh how wonderful it must have been to live in a world before pollution and damage to the ozone layer.

True, one cannot stay forever mired in the past. Yet at the same time, look where technology has taken us so far today. We seem to be always in a downward spiral, as we fumble with ideas of how to correct the damage
man has done this far.

It’s hard to believe that for a world that has existed and survived disasters for millions of years, it has only taken man about two hundred years to bring us to the stage we are at now.

With global warming, ice caps and glaziers melting, changes in the weather patterns which translates into more severe storms, creating devastation around the world, such as we have never seen before. In truth, the very survival of the human race now seems threatened.


There is so much that we as a race of people need to learn from nature. The wildlife, even the lifestyle and teachings of the North American Indian and other ancient peoples, but in particular for me, the birds. Perhaps it is already too late for this phase of world history. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope that it isn’t so.

I turned my attention back to the window and the birds. Life is so much simpler this way.

C'ya