“I wonder why we don’t see that little hawk feeding at our birdfeeders anymore?” Linda was standing at the kitchen window and pondering out loud as she watched the sparrows, redpolls, nuthatches and sundry other small birds bounce busily between birdfeeders on our deck.
“Do you mean the kestrel or the merlin?” I asked.
“Well I haven’t seen either of them for a good long time,” said Linda. “They used to come swooping down and snatch a sparrow or redpoll quite regularly. It used to make me wonder if we were feeding the dickybirds or the sparrow-hawks.”
It was true. For years we had regular visits to our birdfeeders by the merlin and kestrel, two pint-sized but fierce falcons that are about half the size of a large crow. And then a couple of years ago the visits just seemed to stop. We had seen both species perching on power poles within a half-mile of our place so we knew they were still around, apparently just not dining at Chez Webber.
And then just a few days later—”Well, I guess that answers that,” Linda said. “Did you ever see anything like it?”
“I can’t believe my eyes,” I said. “That male merlin streaked in like a blue thunderbolt looking to snatch a sparrow but he was cut right off in mid-snatch by that moth-eaten old crow. And look, the old crow is still giving chase.”
Linda and I both stood there gawking. One of the three scruffy old crows that Linda regularly fed bread from a platform adjacent to the birdfeeders was flying for all he was worth after the blue-grey sleek and agile male merlin. The old crow chased the merlin halfway across the lake and was soon joined in the chase by his two disheveled buddies.
“I guess we haven’t seen many merlins or kestrels dining at our place ever since you became the Crow Lady of Lac La Hache and took to feeding crows,” I said to Linda. “Those crows are not just bedraggled beggars, they are the benevolent bouncers of the bird bar.”
Linda frowned at my lame attempt at alliteration. “Just another lesson from the birdfeeder,” she said.
Linda’s comment got me to thinking. The three crows that hang out at our place seem to peacefully coexist with all the other hangers-on at the birdfeeders. They feed from their platform within a couple of feet of the other birdfeeders and never seem to have any issues with anyone, including the larger birds like the pileated woodpecker and the flicker who come in to chew the fat from time to time. From the diminutive nuthatch to the peaceful pine grosbeaks to the more aggressive cedar waxwings and redwing blackbirds, the three crows just seem to bop about getting along with everybody. And yet, one little killer bird shows up and the three crows become as aggressive as all get out.
It’s not that the pocket falcons would try to take a crow—at only half their size I’m sure they wouldn’t—but the crows just seem to know they are deadly characters for just about everybody else and so they take a stand. It’s like they are acting on behalf of all nuthatches, sparrows and chickadees who wouldn’t stand a chance with a merlin or a kestrel. It’s almost like the crows identify with the more diminutive birds they daily hang out with and they are willing to lay it on the line for them. At least that’s the way it appears around our birdfeeders.
Of course no one really knows what actually goes on in a crow’s head. People who study crows hold that they are extremely intelligent, even as intelligent as some species with opposable thumbs. But whatever is going on, their apparent advocacy at our birdfeeder as they champion for other birds makes me think.
It makes me think about my own dickybird existence, about how so many times in life I need someone to champion for me, someone to advocate for me, someone to fight for me. Oh yes, I can puff up my feathers and make my dickybird-self larger than life with the best of them. But there are many times in my life that my lame attempts at self-defence do not count for much. Perhaps it is something that streaks into my life completely knocking me off my pins. Sometimes it is the very real and agonizing “dark night of the soul” that entangles me. Sometimes it is sin that snares me and chokes me like death. Sometimes it is a nagging fear that overpowers, stealing peace from me. I don’t need to elaborate more than this because I expect that if you are reading this you know pretty much what I am talking about; the discomfort and at times the sheer terror of it, too.
The Bible seems to take my dickybird experiences very seriously. Over and over God is presented as defender, protector, and advocate for His people. The Bible uses powerful words and word pictures to make the point. At times it is as the commander of an army of angels on our behalf (Psalm 91:11); at times it is as a protecting shepherd (Psalm 23); at times it is as the friend who lays down his life (John 15:13); at times it is as an advocate before the judgement seat (1 John 2:1); at times it is as the one who loves perfectly and banishes all fear (1 John 4:18). Whatever the words or the metaphors used in numerous places in the Bible, they all point to a single truth: that God knows that I am in need of protecting and defending and that He is the one true God amenable, able and capable to do that in all circumstances.
One of my first profound experiences of this was before I came to Christ. I was in my early 20s and laying in a hospital late at night awaiting major surgery the following morning. Somehow I got caught between the personal conflict going on between my surgeon and the only other surgeon in the small Alberta town who was to assist in the operation. I had two visits that night, one from each surgeon, one saying I absolutely had to have the operation and the other saying it was putting my life at risk for no reason. I was left absolutely terrified and frantic. I phoned home in tears. Linda told me to look in my night bag, that she had put her little pocket Bible there, that I should get it out and read it. After she tried to console me over the phone to no avail, in desperation I dug into the night bag and found the small red Gideon’s pocket Bible there. I had no idea where to turn to read but somehow I ended up opening it at Psalm 121. I lay on my hospital bed, read it, recited it repeatedly and received an amazing and powerful peace that seemed to fall on me like a warm blanket. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I became a believer in Jesus that night.
