Don’t worry, this is not a post about the age old question – ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’. Let’s save excitement like that for another day!
This is more about a pastime your author never tires of. I can stare with wonder and amazement at nature each and every day. I like to think of nature as part of God’s creation. Of course, there are many people out there who like to think that any thing to do with nature is nothing to do with God, but is only here because somehow, over four and a half billion years ago, a rotating cloud of interstellar dust was spinning with such great speed that it heated up to an incredible heat and coupled with the gravity around caused a nuclear fusion which resulted in the sun being formed!
Along with that, several dust particles were thrown out which, over the next ten to twenty million years, formed the earth.
I may have simplified that process somewhat, but that is basically what many people believe. Which sort of begs the question I said this post wasn’t going to talk about – which came first…? I know I started out by saying this post is not about the chicken and the egg, but in order for there to have been interstellar dust particles, there must have been some sort of galaxy in the first place. Mustn’t there? And if that is the case, where did that first galaxy come from?
I know – it was created by a rotating cloud of interstellar dust which was spinning with such great speed that it heated up to an incredible heat and coupled with the gravity around caused a nuclear fusion which resulted in a sun being formed.
Ah, but how did that galaxy first form? I think we’ve been here before! 😉
Leaving the earth’s creation to one side, there are the birds to talk about. I’m no ornithologist, and sometimes I have great difficulty in recognising one breed of bird from another. Now, I’m not saying I couldn’t tell the difference between an eagle and a sparrow, of course I could, although, I have never actually seen the two of them together in close proximity!
However, I digress. The other day, enjoying one of my walks through the countryside, I came across a field which a farmer was just beginning to plough. He set off from one corner of the field and started to trundle up and down in very straight lines. As he did so, churning up the earth, he left behind him a feast for any bird in the vicinity. At the time the farmer started to plough, there didn’t appear to be a bird in the sky.
Suddenly, and without warning, the field was engulfed with birds!
I didn’t have time to notice from where they all came. It was as if the farmer himself was signalling the start of something like the Olympic Games and had just released the catch on a cage containing hundreds of doves. However, these were not all doves.
Even to my untrained eye, I could tell there were at least three different types of birds all converging on this one ploughed field. There were definitely Wood Pigeons, there were birds that looked like Doves, and there were Gulls of some type. Normally, I would have called them Seagulls, but apparently they, as a breed, don’t exist! That, is just a name we non-ornithologists give to the Common Gull – foolish people that we are. 😉 And there are at least eleven different breeds of Gull for us to try to identify!
That aside, my amazement surrounded the arrival of these birds (whatever their breed). I have seen massive swarms, if I can be permitted to use that description, of Starlings swirling overhead in the past. And from a distance, they do look like a swarm of bees; however, up close the sight of them is truly amazing. Starlings are somehow able to fly in a very close and tight formation the Red Arrows could only dream of. And they never collide!
As I said, the field was engulfed with birds. There must have been at least four hundred birds, but where did they all come from? And how did they know to turn up at that time?
Are birds fitted with some special communicating device which, when one bird spots a freshly ploughed field, automatically signals to every other bird (whatever their breed) in the near vicinity?
Perhaps they are fitted with their own internet connection, and send out instant messages to each other.
I know – they use Twitter, and send out Tweets! 😉
Better Offer? 