(These birds are not the white cattle egrets we see so often in cow pastures. These are little brown-headed birds who arrive in large colonies and gorge themselves on all the seed in your back yard bird feeders.)
So these inventive little dark birds, to survive and propagate their species, developed a good plan-- they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds!
It is sort of tricky, though. The female bird (and they still do this) first locates an available nest, watches it, waiting for the other female to lay her eggs. Then when the nest is vacated for a few moments, the vigilant cowbird removes one of the eggs (by stabbing it, piercing it with her beak and then lifting it out of the nest and dropping it on the ground) and then promptly lays her egg in the vacant spot. As they say, "Timing is everything"...or is that "location is everything"?
Anyway, female cowbirds can lay 10-12 eggs each season doing this, each in another bird's nest.
The adoptive mother bird does not seem to notice and hatches the little stranger along with her other eggs and begins feeding them all together.
The most common adoptive parents are vireos and sparrows.
This time of the year we host huge flocks of these birds, hundreds of them, swarming to our feeders and gobbling up the seed as fast as we get it out to them.
We hear them coming, just moments before we see them. They descend like a cloud onto our patio.
What we hear are some annoying, grating shrieks, like the hinges on a rusty gate. I imagine some far-off heavenly windows or gates opening to let them stream out to the earth below.
Maybe like Pandora, prying open her famous box after the hinges had rusted.
With the cowbirds are usually some grackles, red-winged black birds, maybe a sparrow or two.
And sometimes a yellow-rumped warbler joins the group in our yard.
Now here is my question: If all these cowbirds are being raised in the nests of other birds, then how do they all get back together as adults and join their "group" and start the process all over again? How do they, after they reach adulthood, gather together with their own kind and start the mating process again?
I have asked this question to many experts. But no one seems to have an answer.
So it must be a "God-thing." Another of His patterns He has placed in nature to illustrate some of His great Truths. He must have wired them to leave their adoptive home and seek out some of their own "real" family.
It's really a beautiful picture of God's eternal family. He reaches down and rescues us from our sin and rebellion and places us miraculously in His heavenly family while we are still here on earth. Then one day He will gather us all together to be with Him. He's going to call us and we will rise up to meet Him. And we will be together -- one flock, no matter where we were "hatched."
He has "wired" us that way, too!
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, and with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words. I Thessalonians 4:16-18
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.
Revelation 7:9
So we will be gathered from our earthly homes into the heavenly family of God, each one of us in that particular spot intended for us from before the beginning.
Somehow the little cowbirds get back together to join the ones they belong to, the ones they belong with. And somehow we will, too.
Together Forever.
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
No comments:
Post a Comment