July 15, 2019 (Monday)
I am not a birdwatcher, but I watch birds sometimes. Recently I watched a family of Mockingbirds teaching their juvenile the final stages of its preparation to go out on its own.
Say Hello to Mimus polyglottos, better known among us mortals as Northern Mockingbird.
Dwight takes great care of our yard. I venture outside once in a while. Normally I do not notice any changes, but recently a shrub began putting out clusters of yellow berries, and I asked Dwight what it was. He replied that he did not know because it just came up by itself.
I was watching TV and glanced through the glass patio doors to see a bird’s wings fluttering. He was in the bush with the yellow berries. Then I saw another bird with the first one. As I watched, they took wing and flew away.
After a few minutes, I looked again and saw three birds on the roof’s edge overlooking the plant. It turned out to be a full-sized juvenile getting his final lessons from his parents. The parents took turns showing the young bird how to pluck a berry and swallow it. Gradually the juvenile got the idea and tried it himself. Then they all flew away.
The next day all three perched on the roof, looking down at the berry plant and the juvenile flew down and helped himself. I think I witnessed the final exam of that young Mockingbird. His parents had cared for him from the day he hatched and now he was ready to strike out on his own.
I had seen Cardinals raise their young but this was the first time for me to see Mockingbirds doing it.
My thoughts wandered to my boyhood when, with other boys who had BB guns, we tried to shoot birds. No one had taught us better. Now we know what a wonderful world we live in, surrounded by life forms of many kinds, including various species of birds, each of which is quite interesting.
There’s quite a show going on all around us, even in the packed cities. A Heron hunted for live food in a ditch a block or so from where I lived in Houston from 2004 to 2010. The yard was filled with the sounds of doves cooing every morning. We were surrounded by freeways, but wildlife kept doing its thing and life went on all around us.
As the song says, “Open my eyes that I may see.”
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV).