Friday, April 22, 2011

Thoughts on Troubling Bird Behavior

For the past few days, a bright red robin has seemed rather intent on attacking my bedroom window. His behavior is bizarre. He will fly up and land on a branch just a foot or two from the window and then fly with all his wing power, beak forward for the kill, only to hit an immovable object and slide and fall to the ground. And then less than a minute later, blam! Again and again, over and over.

I have talked to people who seem to know more about birds than I do, as to why the little thing keeps on doing this. The general consensus seems to be that the creature observes a reflection of himself in the window as it acts like a mirror, since the inside of the house is darker than the bright daylight. Thus seeing what he must believe is another male bird in “his” territory, he becomes intent on removing the usurper and possible competition for the area females.

I don’t know how long this little drama will play out, but my thought is that the final outcome could possibly be the picture of his little red carcass, dead from repeated blows to his head, lying on the ground below the window.

Perhaps there is a moral to this story. It might be that the bird finally did manage to destroy his foe. The irony being that the enemy that he killed was himself.

Is there a parallel in human behavior? It appears that we humans tend to proceed to behave in ways that are detrimental to our bodies, our minds and ultimately our souls, albeit in ignorance and misperceptions, believing a lie for truth and seeing darkness as light, so that the “enemy” we finally destroy is actually ourselves.

In this season, as thoughts of the cross of the Christ and the glorious victory come to mind, the command from Jesus to take up our own cross and follow Him to His cross—to die to self and allow Him to live in us, to choose life in Him—becomes a preferred way to life so we don’t have to continue to have war with ourselves like that bird did.


David R. Snow