Page 35 - LOTN Issue 45

FAITH AND CULTURE

One day at the age of eleven I hoped to add a lapwing’s
egg to my collection and searched among the ploughed
fields nearby. I had watched the nest being built and now
intended to do a little robbery, but the mother bird became
On a Wing and a Prayer frantic. She stopped in front of me and began to drag her
wing along the ground, pretending to be injured, as she
with would do for a fox.
At the same time she uttered the most heart-wrenching
Father Peter Barry cry, like the cry of an infant child. It was so moving that I gave
up the hobby there and then and persuaded my best friend
Billy to do the same. We now began to collect sightings of
different species and that interest has taken me all over
the world. My collection of sightings now stands at over
3,350 different species. Among these are iconic birds with
Eggsamination of Conscience! fantastic names: resplendent quetzal, in the mountains of
Costa Rica, and shoebill stork in the swamps of Mabamba,
Uganda.
hen I was a young boy, I had a habit of I have also found an abundance of bird-references in the
stealing, and did it very successfully. I Bible. Jeremiah laments: “Even the stork in the sky knows
stole birds' eggs, like many young lads in her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the
WOrkney at the time. I had the egg of the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people
thrush, the blackbird, the herring gull, and a host of do not know the requirements of the Lord” ( Jeremiah 8: 6
others. We traded eggs like other boys traded stamps. I and 7).
noticed that some of the eggs were pointed at the end. And Jeremiah had only to look upwards to see the many
If they rolled out of the nest they would roll round in a thousands of birds that pass through Palestine on their
circle. Other eggs had colours which blended into the spring migration, and return again in the autumn.
background, and acted as camouflage. I wonder if he knew a particular habit of the stork he

Gina Sim captures that fateful moment with this beautiful illustration
Page 35