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Dalton
Roberts |
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My computer window is a porthole on the world. Lately I have been watching birds raise their offspring and I think they are better parents than humans. They know the power of repetition. I saw a purple finch teaching a baby to pick up and crack a sunflower seed. He would fly to the feeder and wait for the baby to fly to his side. He would slowly take out a seed and turn his head toward the baby and say, “Watch, Buster, and I will show you how.” The he would crack it and eat it while junior sat there with his mouth open. After he ate two or three he would feed junior one, then leave him alone on the feeder. When the little dummy didn’t crack one on his own, Papa just repeated the lesson Repetition tires humans but most children only learn a lesson after it is repeated 327 times. That’s not laboratory research. It is strictly based on the number of times it took me to learn something my father or mother tried to tell me. There’s a little automatic turn-off valve in the heads of kids that closes whenever a parent says, “Now listen to me! This is important” Keep on. On the 328th time, they will have it. Papa Purple taught his son self-effort. He didn’t robotically buy him a car on his 16th birthday with no effort on his part. He would crack a sunflower seed and hold it in his beak so sonny boy could see it, then swiftly fly off to a limb and wait for him to come and get a bite. An hour went by without junior cracking his first seed. He left him on the feeder and disappeared in a tree. Purple #II looked frantic and abandoned. After a few minutes of aloneness, hunger hit him. He went back to the seeds. Wben he finally cracked one, he looked shocked. While I applauded, his patient father zoomed in from the tree where he was hiding to express his pride. Bluebirds are great parents. While they are egg sitting or the babies are small, they will try to drive off any predator. Those in my box have driven off a cat, a blue jay and a nosy starling this year. One year they ejected crows! It was a hilarious sight to see a tiny bluebird chase two big crows across my back yard and over the treetops far away. They didn’t drown their babies in the bathtub or put them in a car and run them into a lake or shake them until their brains were damaged. Thank God bluebirds don’t take child-rearing lessons from humans. A bluebird once told me, “If humans are God’s greatest handiwork, we are all in deep trouble.” Bluebirds are also good at arousing the curiosity of their babies and making them see the world’s great possibilities. When the babies are tiny, they enter the box to take them food. The babies think their little box is the whole world. As the babies get to the pre-flight stage, they hold the food just inside the box, forcing them to come and get it, knowing it will give them a peek at this big old world. Then they actually hold it just outside so the babies will have to stick their heads out the door. Bluebirds have read that verse in the Old Testament about God motivating us to action “as an eagle stirreth her nest.” Eagle nests are made of sharp sticks. When eagle parents get ready for their young to get out of the nest and get a job, they stir the sticks so sharp points will create too much discomfort for them to remain at home. They say, “Really, ten years is too long to work on a bachelor’s degree. Hit the road, Jack.” Too bad human parents can’t take Child Rearing 101 from Professor Bluebird and Dr. Eagle.
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