Bird watching in the winter is hit or miss. Sometimes I walk through woods or along the lake at the college and nothing is moving—not a single bird is rustling in the bare alders or tall Douglas firs. Other times they are everywhere: chickadees, bushtits, ruby-crowned kinglets, and yellow-rumped warblers. They swarm through bushes pecking at anything edible and then are gone. This feast or famine for bird watchers is because in the winter the birds flock up.
When the food is scarce and weather icy, the birds come together. I suppose there is some survival advantage that explains this behavior. Perhaps a flock gives more eyes looking for food. My theory is that discovery of food causes bird belches that attract the other birds.
I wonder if God’s people are somewhat like birds (sometimes bird-brained) in that when the food is plentiful and weather good, we all scatter and go our own ways. Perhaps as society grows more hostile and we in the West enter more fully into a post-Christian age, the weather will change for Christians. Weather forecasts don’t look promising. But on the positive side, maybe we will flock together: rufous-sided Baptists, black-capped Presbyterians, golden-crowned Pentecostals, and swallow-tailed Nazarenes.
