We sense it every spring: the movement of new birds in our yards. Many robins actually do stay close during a mild winter, but after a nice rainstorm they are all over the yards looking for their proverbial worms. We start to see goldfinches and if, we’re really lucky, a bluebird. They are moving further north with the warming climate.
We know the birds move around from season to season but it’s only been in the last year or so that we’ve really been able to track bird migration. We don’t think of the International Space Station as a bird watcher, but by the use of tiny sensors on birds, that’s what it has become.
Most birds migrate in north-south direction although a few do cross oceans east-west. Protecting nesting sites from human encroachment is critical for the survival of birds, for like frogs and toads, their decrease signal the destruction of their habitat, the one created by God and given to us for care.
Prayer for the Day
As the morning light comes earlier, we hear the sounds of birds,
A gift for our ears and senses created by you, O God;
Flitting about our yards looking for just the right materials for their nests,
Let us leave a pile of brush for a new generation of life.
Bring the song of your feathered creatures to our ears, O God,
And let them infuse the core of our being with your music.
In the name of the One who loved the birds of the air,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
- Robert Wilson Lynd, Irish poet and essayist (1879-1949)
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.
- Terry Tempest Williams, American naturalist and writer
The Lord gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40: 29-31