Birds of a Feather
by
Barb Hansen
November 1, 2005
It’s easy to forget this while sipping merlot and
emailing friends, but it’s true. Ask anybody. We
belong to the kingdom of animalia, the order of
primates, the genus of homo, the species of sapiens,
the advanced species of wine lovers and the
super-duper family of sailors. (The last two are
just theories at this point. Mine, actually.)
I
also believe that like warblers we humans are
hard-wired to do certain things like, for example,
migrate to Florida during the winter months.
However, because we have advanced brains and central
heat, many in the kingdom of animalia ignore those
signals. And that is such a shame, because those who
live in cold climates could be having so much fun
outside in the sunshine and stay warm, too. Not
listening to those health signals, I suspect, is one
of the primary causes of the growing pandemic that
the researchers call Seasonal Affective Disorder
(SAD).
Warblers are hard-wired to fly to Southwest Florida
in September and depart for Central America in
November. We’ll miss them, of course, but it’s okay
because they are listening to their inner selves and
doing what they are supposed to do. Anyway, more
snowbirds are on the way. Flocks of white pelicans
from Canada will soon be floating in sheltered
coves, diving on thick schools of minnows and taking
graceful winged exercise together. Belted
kingfishers will whistle and zoom through mangrove
passages. Here and there a loon from the land of
frozen lakes (Midwest and Canada) will pop to the
surface with a fish wiggling in its beak. Our
resident bald eagles and hawks always invite their
cousins to visit from up north and they all come.
None of these snowbirds to the best of modern
scientific knowledge suffers from SAD. Nor is there
a documented case of SAD among our permanent
populations of herons, ibises, egrets, willets and
bitterns. All of these happy creatures are on
display in the winter months to watchful sailors.
Vic and I especially like to cruise the skinny
backbay waters of Pine Island Sound because we can
observe so many birds doing what their instincts
tell them to do.
As
scientific observers of the barrier islands of
biodiversity at certain times of the year we
hypothesize that we are also obeying silent neural
instructions up to and including the part when we
put the cork back into the tall, brown bottle with
the dark red fluid. When summer returns to Florida
each year Vic and I, still obeying said neural
system signals, break open the chardonnay and
migrate to cooler climes to visit relatives in New
York City, Vermont, Indiana and other points north.
As
a young history student in Indiana I remember
learning about and feeling so sorry for the native
Americans of the upper Midwest who had to try to
stay warm through those brutal winters wearing only
those meager
garments. But I later learned they didn’t stay
there in the winter. They went south, following the
sun, eating fresh fish and going where the weather
suited their clothes. They were the original Florida
snowbirds of the homo sapiens persuasion.
Vic and I and the visitor’s bureau warmly invite you
and yours to do what warblers, ruby throated
hummingbirds and all birds of a certain feather do
enthusiastically when the temperature drops --
vacation in Florida.
People, listen to your inner selves. The heating
bills that arrive at your home this fall and winter
will remind you of that.
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