Birds in Flight

In his research on a bird species called bar-tailed godwits, biologist Robert Gill discovered in 2006 amazing flight patterns that turned previous assumptions upside-down. While godwits had been thought to make several stops in Asia as they migrated from southern Alaska to New Zealand and Australia, it turns out that these large waders fly far out over the Pacific Ocean, traveling “up to 7,100 miles in nine days — the longest nonstop flight ever recorded.”

As reported in a story in this week’s New York Times, advances in technology—such as tiny and remote tracking devices—led to Professor Gill’s findings and opened up the door for similar research. Not long ago ornithologists thought that ruby-throated hummingbirds, for example, stopped in Mexico as they traveled home in the spring. We know now, though, that they “set out from the Yucatán Peninsula in the evening and arrive in the southern United States the next afternoon.”

There’s something comforting about this news from the animal kingdom, especially when our own species seems to have gone so far off track. With angry finger-pointing over the BP oil spill and violence at the Mexican border, we seem to be at war with ourselves. And not just in America. Tensions are mounting between North and South Korea, and Europe is in a tailspin over its economic woes. It’s as if the gods on Mount Olympus are looking down at the humans and wondering at the mess they’ve made of things.

I’m reminded specifically of Pandora’s Box. She seems to have opened it even wider these last several years, allowing greed and anger and hatred to flourish. Fear and mistrust abound. But Pandora offered a gift to humans as well. It was Hope that tumbled out alongside the pestilent plagues. Hope that would remain a constant comfort to the mortals below.

The bar-tailed godwits and the ruby-throated hummingbirds seem to me to carry Hope with them as they soar miles beyond our expectations. Unlike us, they’re using their god-given talents not only to survive, but to survive with grace.

We have god-given talents, too, with our minds and imagination and heart. If we use these gifts the way the birds use theirs, we just might find our way home—the home that most of us want, one devoid of hatred and injustice.