I'll fly away.

I told you I wondered about birds a lot.  We have bird feeders right outside our back window, so that might have something to do with it.  I think we lived here three or four years before they finally started coming to our feeders.  Which I thought was pretty strange considering there is nothing behind our house but a big field and beyond the field, a GIANT hole....but I'll leave the hole for another day.  And beside our house on one side is woods and an abandoned farm.  So you would think there would have been a lot of birds hanging around.  I wonder what they were waiting for? 

Anyway, looking at birds or any wildlife for that matter gives me a chance to use one of my favorite words.  Anthropomorphize.  Which means to ascribe human characteristics to things not human.  Like birds.  My cousin taught that word to me many years ago.  I still remember because I thought it was cool to learn such a big word and even cooler to have a name for something I do all the time anyway. 

So I think about birds like people.  They come in all different shapes and sizes, like people.  They have their own special habits unique to their type of bird, kind of like different people groups have different cultures.  They live in different types of homes, like people do.  They come in different colors and so do we.

One of my favorite observations concerning birds came from watching some wild turkeys.  The male was strutting around looking all fancy with his tail all splayed out and thinking he was so special.  The female just kept pecking and walking across the field and totally ignored him.  But he kept strutting his stuff.  Now tell me you haven't seen similar behavior among humans. 

Bird courtship behaviors can include...singing, elaborate displays of feathers, building a nest, dancing, preening, and offering food.   Need I say more?