Science, Gone to the Birds

Good morning Everyone!

While I was out walking Tyra today at 6:30 a.m., which due to the time change my body still unhappily believes to be 5:30 a.m., the entire area was covered in fog.  Not the thick, can’t see in front of your face fog, but the kind of fog that softens the lines of the trees and the road and the lake around you.  If you don’t have to drive in it, it is beautiful.  But, strangely, the new moon, which was still out, was sharp and clear in the sky above – yet surrounded, from my earthly perspective, by fog.  I wonder how it did that?

The birds were wide awake already also, singing their hearts out.  I didn’t hear the woodpecker (the only sound I would have recognized besides a crow’s caw), but there were multiple songs in the woods around me, which made me wonder why birds sing in the morning.  I looked it up, and alas, because there is no definitive answer and none of the existing theories are particular attractive to me, I don’t have a good answer for you.  I am choosing to believe that the birds sing in order to greet the day, until the scientists make a final decision otherwise (and I’m sure they will).

It is fascinating to me, though, the mysteries that still exist for us in nature.  Just using the bird song example, mankind has known for centuries, if not millenia, that birds sing in the morning.  Even so, in the year 2012, we don’t have a definitive answer as to why.

One of us could try just asking the nearest bird that would stand still long enough to hear us, but I can just imagine that conversation:

Person:  Hello Bird.  Can you tell me why you are singing this morning? 

Bird, named George (all in bird language):  Hey, Fred, get a load of this dude!  It almost looks like he’s trying to talk to us. 

Fred flits over for a minute:  That’s silly.  Everyone knows humans can’t talk.

Person:  Are you trying to tell me something? 

Betty Jean, from the nest:  I think he is trying to talk.

George:  He may be, but it’s not coming through.

Fred:  Hey, you want to have a little fun? 

George:  What do you mean?

Fred:  I could start to dive bomb him like I thought he was threatening Betty’s nest.  I bet I could have him running in six seconds!

George starts laughing:  That’s a good one.

Betty Jean:  Fred, don’t you dare!  He isn’t bothering us.

Person pulls out notebook and writes.

Fred:  What’s that he’s doing?

Betty Jean:  I think its called writing.  I nested in a bush near a window one year, and they … um… write… in two ways – the way this guy is doing it and somehow by hitting small black rectangles and watching a white big rectangle while they do so.  I’m not sure why, though. 

George:  Oh, that part’s easy.  Humans have the worst memory in the universe, so they have tried to cope by …. I think the word is “record” things.  

Person turns to leave.

Fred:  Hey, guys, watch this! I can make this human freeze in one move.

Betty:  Fred, you better behave.

Fred: No worries, Betty.  In fact, I’ll probably make his day by doing this.  

Fred flies down to five feet in front of Person, who immediately stands still, watching. Fred hops around, doing bird things at random, like singing, cocking his head and watching Person, poking his beak in the ground, and making Person turn in a circle slowly by hopping around him in stages.

Betty and George smother giggles.

Fred calls up from the ground:  I can do this for hours, and the Person will stay right there and watch.  Silly, isn’t it?

Betty:  Oh, that’s funny, Fred, but George, dear, I’m hungry.

George:  Okay, Betty, I’m on my way.  Hey, Fred, enough play for now; we’ve got work to do.

Fred, reluctantly flies back into the woods.

Person recedes in the distance, scribbling notes the whole way.

Another victory for science!

Have a great day!

Nancy