Blotchy is good

The goldfinches are getting blotchy. That's a sure sign of spring. If you know nothing about male goldfinches, they turn a dull kind of olive green/brown for the winter months, and then when spring is approaching they begin to gradually turn to a very brilliant beautiful yellow until the fall when they will once again 'blotchify' and change into their winter garb.

I noticed some other promising signs of spring last week. Several mornings my ear was suddenly tuned to hear that melodic male cardinal song that is silent throughout the winter. Normally through the winter, groups of cardinals have gathered at my feeders - a mixture of males and females - and though they chased each other a little, they were still tolerant of one another while feeding. Last week, while still in the thick of cold, snowy weather, I caught a glimpse of 4 male cardinals chasing each other around the trees, with one dominant male returning, paired with a female and the two of them ate together at one of the feeders. Lucky them to have exclusive rights to this lady's feeders. They will never go hungry!!  For Richard's stunning pictures of cardinals in his At the Water blog, click here and here.

Are you as fascinated at 'Instinct' as I am??

Instinct: "an inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species"

Inborn.        Tendency.             

So, you mean birds don't have calendars back at their roosting spots where they settle in for the night? They don't pull out their Audubon Calendar and say, 'Oh my gosh! It's almost March and I don't have a mate yet!' But really....if it's still cold and wintry and they were just born in the summertime, how the heck would they know that this cold stuff is all going to end in the next couple of months - it's all they've known for half their life -  and they have responsibilities to find mates, drop eggs, and raise babies? And when it's nest building time, and they've never built one, nor (obviously) seen their mother build the one they were raised in for all of two weeks, how do they know which materials are 'only' used for the type of nest their kind makes? Nests are all uniquely different for each type of bird. What if a cardinal starts building the way a wren would - with all the wrong materials and in the wrong place. Everyone knows it's all about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.


It's why spring fascinates me every year. It happens.....faithfully. 

The cold...the dark...the brown....the damp....and the dead......

all becomes the warmth....the vibrant....the colours.....the scents.....the life! 

And it's why birds fascinate me. They are atune to it all, even before it begins. Their songs begin in earnest before life bursts forth and the melody of the earth begins. 

You may think things are pretty quiet.....but tune your ear to the melody. Don't miss the show! Grab a front seat and get ready to watch the fascination of creation in action. 

  The heavens declare the glory of God;
   the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
  Day after day they pour forth speech;
   night after night they reveal knowledge.
 They have no speech, they use no words;
   no sound is heard from them.
 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
   their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19 : 1-4 (The Bible)