Who's a bird watcher?

Here is Colorado we've got some pretty cool birds. The magpies are so nifty - Heckle and Jeckle in real life. Does anyone remember them? They were a couple of jokers in tuxedos who happened to be birds, and were always wreaking havoc in the cartoons. It wasn't until I moved to Colorado that I realized WHY Heckle and Jeckle were wearing tuxedos.

Magpie in our barn, Heckle looking for Jeckle

There's also the Bluebird of Happiness. Saw one in our cherry tree today. I mean, bright blue. Didn't look real, except it was flapping its wings and flitting around.

 BlueBird in a Cherry Tree - photo by Skyler Ewing (Pexels)

And then there's Meadowlarks. We always know spring has arrived because the Meadowlarks have come back. We've got a lot of them this year, and they're like a chorus of rambunctious teenagers in our fields. They also sit on the power cables and look down at us mere mortals, serenading us all day long.

It's such a wonderful sound. I love the heral...

It takes birds more than a day to migrate from one place to another. Besides having a great sense of direction, they need to rest. Some birds land. We’ve all had encounters with flocks of geese, honk honk honk, looking for a good place to spend the night (often some farmer’s recently seeded field). But there are birds who go non-stop - And you thought New York to Sydney was a long flight.

Several species have been identified as sleep-flyers; Frigatebirds, Albatrosses (get your neck out of the way!), the common Swift - which doesn’t seem so common if they can fly while asleep.

An Albatross. Photo by Pixabay

They have a clever brain that uses something called Unihemispheric sleep. One side of their brain sleeps while the other side controls flight and navigation. I can barely find my way to the grocery store sometimes using both sides of my brain, so I’m impressed.

When both sides of their brain DO fall asleep at the same time, it’s generally just a few seconds. Good thing, or ther...