“There’s a woman on my Nextdoor feed who has a nest of 4 little roadrunners. 3 hatched around the same time, but #4 took another week. She assumed it wasn’t going to hatch at all, but it did.”
This was the message I got from Jill. Susan also emailed me telling me how the barn swallows that nest in her carport develop at different rates.
Of course, now that I think about it, it makes sense all the birds in a nest don’t necessarily hatch at the same time. And they don’t all grow at the same rate.
I read about how pigeons incubate for 28 days then leave the nest after another 28 days and I take it literally. Maybe not to the day, but still, I make the assumption that there is precision in the natural world according to the man-made construct of numbers.
There I am trying to fit nature into a neat predictable package. I know from my own life that kids growing up in the same family can perceive very different experiences of the same events. So why do I expect baby birds to all hatch at the same time and develop equally?
I suppose it’s comforting to believe I “know” something whether it’s about nature or my own life. I’m looking for some kind of certainty, something I can depend on perhaps to ease my underlying anxiety.
Or maybe it’s just the unpredictable nature of life that makes me crave the known. The more information I have the safer I’ll be.
I think it’s my curiosity that saves me from getting too comfortable. From allowing me to believe that just because I read a book or two about pigeons, I know all about them.
Because it’s my curiosity that led me to climb a ladder and take pictures of the pigeons from the time their parent built the nest to the time the baby pigeons leave it.
It’s observing the birds in life that leads me to ask the questions and start the conversation often right here on my blog.
How often is it with me that information shuts the door and curiosity opens it again? It doesn’t have to work this way. Information, when not absolute can become knowledge. And knowledge with a dose of awareness and curiosity can become wisdom.
I needed to read this. I’m often looking for a concrete answer to an abstract situation. There is no such answer and your blog was helpful.
I’m so glad to hear that what I wrote was helpful Marion. Thanks for letting me know. We do want answered, don’t we?