Today, we awoke to our first Daylight Savings Time Sunday.  We had reset an essential clock or two back an hour before going to bed, and will spend the rest of the week readjusting clocks on walls, stoves, cars, etc.  And our bodies will take a few days to re-sync as well.

Ah yes, we “gained an hour.”  I guess the idea is that kids can now go to school in the daylight. Of course, it’s nearly dark when they go home.  Then sometime in April or May, we’ll “lose an hour” as we “spring ahead.” With that and the summer equinox, I’ll be able to mow my lawn at 9:30 if I so choose.

The whole clock changing thing seems a bit silly.  Kinda seems like a feeble attempt by The World Order to control the solar cycle.  What’s amusing is hearing some folks actually say that we really did lose a complete hour of daylight…just by turning back our clocks…

Anyway, I was just preparing to brew some coffee when I looked out the kitchen window.

Migrating blackbirds filled a big slice of the sky.  Thousands fluttered toward the east in a communal avian stream, lasting several minutes.  They drifted gradually southward until they were above our house.  By the time I got outside, the last few were flying over.  Fortunately they were thoughtful enough to not drop me a souvenir.

Blackbirds don’t have to worry about setting clocks.  But how do they know when it’s time to head south?  Who was the head bird leading them, and how did it claim that authority?  And how many birds were just going along with the flock…when they really wanted to fly off in a different direction, or not leave until Wednesday?  How many stayed behind, and why?

How did a million blackbirds get the message to all meet up on Sunday with wings ready, because “we plan to make it to Peoria today”?  How did they know to buck a fairly steady southern breeze by heading ESE?

Genesis says God created man to have dominion over the birds of the sky.  But it would have been funny to see a couple guys trying to shoo the birds in another direction, or yell them into landing in the neighbor’s cornfield.

I realize our pioneer ancestors were able, within a few generations, to tragically blast clouds of passenger pigeons from the sky and into extinction.

But at least for this one morning, we had no control over where those blackbirds were headed or what they were doing.  And that’s reassuring.

We’ll just have to stick with manipulating the sunrise, right?