Birds

I will use this forum to go deeper into one of my old passions: birds! When I was 12 years old I started, more as a coincidence, with bird watching. Armed with a small binocular and a bird guide, I started searching with some friends for normal bird species, like the Chiffchaff, the Chaffinch and the Kestrel. It was in a way adventurous for a twelve year old kid away alone and most importantly it was a good time with my friends. But quite fast a “factor” competition came in, as it became the search for rare birds. Probably you think now that the only rare bird in this story is myself, but you could be mistaken. Bird watching is much more practiced then you probably imagine: This rare bird watching e.g. has its own English word: “Twitching”. And there is a Hollywood film about it: “The big year”. Although it has little change to become Olympic, some even call it a sport. But my attempts were more modest and relaxed. At the end, I had on my list species like Fan-tailed Warbler, Lesser White-fronted Goose and the incredible Two-barred Crossbill. Now you are really impressed, no?

Anyway, one thing I liked about birds was the fact that they are so divers; you had of all kinds. And in that sense, they are just like humans. In the rest of my speech I will talk about two bird species and what we can learn from them. The first one illustrates that we are all chicken if it comes down to handle changes and the second one will show that we are also capable to do the opposite.

But first the chicken! We have at home 2 chicken. Great animals: eating all your left-overs, keeping some space herbs-free and giving eggs! Some week ago, I had a problem: the eggs were destroyed every day again. But how did this happen? After a remarkable piece of detective work, I found out that a Magpie, the king of thieves under the birds came in the henhouse and ate the eggs. As a handy handyman as I am, I attached some Plexiglas strips before the entrance of the henhouse. It worked: no more Magpie. One problem: also no more chicken going in the henhouse. At the hour that the chicken normally go into their house, I went outside. One of them was totally “freeking” out and running around like a chicken without a head, as we say in Dutch. And the other one, I could not find directly. Finally, I saw the bum of the missing chicken sticking out of some bushes, as it had isolated itself from the world by putting its head in some green. Hilarious how the world of these chicken tumbled down just by 3 Plexiglas strips. And probably we are not scared of Plexiglas, but if we are honest, aren’t we all a little bit like these chicken when it concerns changes? We are all paralyzed when it comes down to big changes, especially if they are long-term or contain a proportion of uncertainty. We stick e.g. too long to our job, because we are scared of the unknown in a possible new opportunity?

But then there is this second bird and he or she will fly in the story soon. But first I have to put on my running shoes and go out for a tour. And I am lucky, close to my home, I have a nice piece of nature where I love to go jogging. Some months ago, I did my normal tour until I saw a Buzzard, a medium to large bird of prey, landing very close to me on a branch of a tree. Fantastic, I could see clearly its yellow claws and its sharp beak, bringing back all the old memories from my bird watching period. I continued running. But suddenly, I got hit on the head, rather hard. It was that Buzzard that attacked me from the back. I did not have any injuries, but it was quite a surprise: the birder taking by the bird. Later on the internet, I found out that other people, often joggers or bikers, got injured rather severely. But where did this small Buzzard get the courage to attack a relative big and dangerous creature as me? One word: passion! Probably, the Buzzard has a nest in the neighbourhood and this passion, this higher purpose, makes him or her take bold actions in their changing environment. You can see similar things with e.g. swans.

So to conclude: What can we learn from these two birds? Well, when it comes down to important personal choices or to global changes our society is facing, it is really up to us to make the choice. Do we want to be the Chicken or the Buzzard? Are we willing to get out of our comfort zone or do we bury our head in the sand like an Ostrich? All too often we hang onto our stones, while the universe is throwing us diamonds. And the magic spell to mutate from a chicken into a majestic Buzzard is passion! Cultivate this “grinta” and major things will await us.