A Little Bird Told Me

We’ve entered the season of autumn. In some ways this place where I live on the Central Coast of California can seem seasonless because the seasons are just a lot more subtle than where I grew up in Ohio. Temperature-wise, it’s not much different than our summer right now. But I can feel that we are autumn now—the mornings are darker, we had a lovely rainfall, and there’s just a different feeling in the air.

I’ve recently been paying attention to the fact that fall is a time of bird migration. Much of this migration activity happens at night, so last night while I was watching evening television, going to bed, and dreaming, ten thousand birds were traveling a mile above my head. Migration is one of those ordinary things that's completely extraordinary.

I watched a Q&A on migration with an ornithologist from the Cornell Lab, and someone asked how birds know where to go and when to go. What determines where birds go is food. Their travel is about seeking nourishment. And when to go is signalled by the change in daylight. So as the light begins to change little by little, something in the bird knows it's time to go, it's time to seek nourishment elsewhere. And so the bird begins their journey, flying thousands of miles, often to another continent.

I also heard an interview recently on NPR where the interviewer kept asking the scientist “but do the animals think about this and know this or is it just instinct? Is it just instinct?” She asked this question a few times. And the scientist said “It's instinct. But this is still very complex!” The question pointed out that sometimes we might feel like instinct is a less sophisticated way of knowing, more basic than the way we humans think and decide consciously. But instinct is its own form of knowing which is sophisticated in its own way. After all, it guides these tiny creatures across continents successfully!

It seems to me that birds are not confined to using their instinct, but instead you might say that they are free to follow their instinct. Who ever heard of a bird second-guessing or agonizing over their inner knowing? “Well, I went to Chile last year, so maybe I should get out of my rut.” “Is it cliché to winter in Florida?” “My friend Mallard is going to just stay here for the winter… maybe I should do that, too.” This sounds silly because it is silly. There's none of this fight with the instinct. The bird just follows the inner pull.

There's so much wisdom there for us to glean from our animal neighbors, and this is what I'm reflecting on right now:

🍁 When do I find myself arguing with my own inner knowing?

🍁 Can I allow my intuition to guide me toward nourishment?

Perhaps what is right for me in one season may be different in the next season of life, so when I feel an inner pull in some direction, I should follow it. I aspire to be as wise as a little bird, to fly high and far, following my inner knowing.

🌼 Learn from the Natural World:

Katie Dutcher