Birds and Botany. Hands down my most interesting class this semester. Each Monday at four p.m. (the time the sun finally rises each day in Oregon) eight class mates and I meet up with our brilliant professor to observe and identify birds and plants.
It’s a peaceful time, after a full day of sitting and listening in classrooms, to be able to walk around campus with our binoculars and notebooks and listen to the birds. We attempt to identify them by the way they look, sound, and fly. It’s safe to say that I will probably never be a professional ornithologist, but nonetheless I’m learning from it.
This Monday we drove to Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. I was shocked to see how many birds were lurking about as we pulled up near the pond. The refuge is designed to provide a habitat for bird species (mainly the Dusky Canada Goose) as well as reptiles and amphibians. I watched through my binoculars, that tend to cross my eyes rather than magnify the image, as a nutria swam up onto a stump next to a Double Crested Cormorant. (If you don’t know what a nutria is then picture a beaver mixed with a rat.)
I watched as the birds did what they were designed to do. Some ducks swam in circles to stir up their food in a tiny little water tornado, other’s stood still on one foot. I saw a pack of birds in the hundreds fly through the air changing colors together as they turned to change direction.
These birds were basking in the sun living the way God designed them to live. I believe it’s the same way that he designed us to live as well. By glorifying him, without stress and anxiety but pure complete trust that he will provide.
Mathew 6:26 “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
Thank you so much for the support and encouragement!
