I have suddenly taken notice that our magpies have disappeared.  (15 September 2024).  I haven't seen a magpie for months.  Same thing with crows and ravens.  Where are they?  What's happened?  On the way to church today I watched for birds.  There weren't many.  There were hawks and ringed doves and blackbirds, but few others.  I did, however, see one magpie in Haines.  That's reassuring, but I suspect that a disease or other problem has taken our magpies away.

There were either fewer swallows this year than normal, or else some left earlier than usual.  There were robins helping themselves to cherries this year, but zero magpies or starlings.  The absence of starlings might be because grasshoppers are in abundance, but I'm going to have to take a drive over to the feedlot across the valley to see if we still have starlings.  We have flickers and a pair of pileated woodpeckers in our orchard, but few other birds.  Even robins are scarce.

It's fall now.  It's silent outside.  I can listen and not hear any birds.  They're starting to migrate south, but I'm worried about our bird population.  I haven't heard from our resident horned owls all summer.

I love birds.  It would be tragic to not have them.

Two weeks ago Danny told me about a young man in his ward who is obsessed with birds.  Danny asked for my articles about birds so that he could feed them to this young man.  I could think of a handful of articles that I'd written.  I told Danny that I'd look them up and send him a list.  I was shocked to find a total of 29 articles!  I had no idea that I'd written so much  (See accompanying list.  This article brings the total to 30).

Most of the articles were written with the intent of applying a gospel principle.

Coming home from church, I was still thinking about birds.  I wondered how often birds were used in the scriptures to teach gospel principles.  I find birds to be a fertile field in that regard, yet birds are rarely mentioned in the scriptures.  That surprised me.

There are the ravens which fed Elijah.  The Savior used the analogy of a hen gathering her chicks under her wings.  He also said that a sparrow can not fall to the ground without the Father's notice.  There are the quail that fed the Children of Israel.  With a very few other exceptions, birds have gotten very little mention in the scriptures.

In contrast I find that I have written about jays, hawks, quail, starlings, magpies, owls, turkeys, ivory-billed woodpeckers, doves, pigeons, geese, peregrine falcons, honeyguides, and ducks.  All of those articles have a gospel twist.  I've learned a lot from birds.

I do hope that I'm not observing a decline in their populations.  They add a great deal to our world.