Birds

With keen awareness nature, especially animals, offers cues and connection.

Joseph Rael, a very inspiring Native American teacher, tells the story of a bird who helped him avoid a fire.  The bird swooped around him where hot ash burned without Joseph realizing it. The story is told in the book Being & Vibration.

I have a milder swooping bird story.  My husband and I were running the same system of trails but separately.  What we do is plan to meet at the trail head at a certain time and otherwise go our own way.  I was on the return trip, jogging a long and mostly uneventful stretch.  A bird never swooped in front of me over the course of the hour, except this one time.  The bird's swoop from my right to my left caused me to turn to watch it.  In doing so I caught sight of a figure in my peripheral vision, behind me about 100 feet back.  It was my husband who I had not seen in nearly an hour.  In fact, I had not seen many people at all over the hour.  It was as though the bird was a partner, providing a signal.

There's another significant bird story but the connection has as much to do with the human being in-tune as the bird.  Back in the 90's I was expecting someone at my home one afternoon.  She is an intuitive, giving and compassionate person, with people but especially with animals.  I spent the morning in the yard doing chores with a complete lack of significant wildlife connection.  As soon as the woman arrived an adolescent blue jay landed on the fence close by, looked at her and started (I kid you not) conversation.  He then landed on her, played with her hair, chattered, swooped around her head.  I was uneasy since at the time I was recalling being dive-bombed by jays as a kid.  But my guest wasn't.  She understood, listened.  Long story short, it was determined by a wildlife rescuer that the jay was raised by a human and then released.  A few years later a new friend told me his daughter-in-law was a bird rescuer.  As we became acquainted we realized our blue jay connection.  She had the jay and was planning to keep him in the aviary for life since he was still attached to people. 

Somewhere on this blog is the story of the crow outside the vet office the day we said goodbye to our old dog. 

5/22/12 Update:  After looking around it seems I have not posted the story of the crow and my old dog.  I'll create a separate post for it.