Findings

Every once in a while I like to list things I've found around the net. I love the serendipity of this vast and infinitely varied multiverse. Once there, I am like a giddy Jay bird and will collect both sustenance and shiny things. Here are a few of my findings to brighten your day.

Etsy is site that offers handmade items only. One example is the Green Women Body Scrub made by Alchemille. She is one of the Pagans of Etsy team and you can check out their blog at that link.

Tea & Cookies offers us warm food for February at her blog, along with some ravashing photos. Read her wonderful post titled A Soup, for the Waiting where she offers food for the body and also food for thought. (and Tea, when you find that instruction manual, will you let the rest of us know?)

Speaking of food, let us not forget that February is National Bird Feeding Month.

The Wild Bird Centers' website notes that:

This observance was established because wintertime is one of the most difficult periods in much of North America for birds to survive in the wild.

Consider that:
- A typical backyard bird doesn't weigh as much as two nickels.
- Birds spend most of their waking hours searching for food -- without the help of "hands" and "fingers".
- They may consume 15% of their body weight overnight just keeping warm enough to survive.
- Like mail carriers, they're outside in sleet, snow, wind and cold.

The resolution noted that one-third of the adult population feeds wild birds in their backyards. Providing food, water and shelter helps birds survive, benefits the environment and supplements wild birds' natural diet of weed seeds and harmful insects.

It's import to feed birds responsibly. Check out their site for tips on how to best feed the birds in your area.

The Bird Feeding Society reminds us that:

In nature we often find connections to our inner selves: our place in the world; our human victories and shortcomings; our challenges and inspirations and, very often, our responsibilities.

Over the last half-century of urbanization, people have gradually missed out on lessons nature may teach us. Lifestyle changes and loss of local habitat often separate us from the natural world. Television takes us to places once only explored on foot. Thankfully, there is still a nature activity still available to everyone and that's feeding and watching wild birds. Backyard birds may be the only wildlife many people see any more. The ability of wild birds to fly, their intrinsic beauty feed the imagination and their accessibility makes wild birds a perfect teacher and reminder about vanishing habitat and our responsibility to preserve it..

My thanks today go out to Whistle Dance, who asks us what we earthwise folks should do with used CD's, when we don't want to violate copyright, add to our own clutter or make yet more trash for the planet. The answers he got are worth reading.

Need some springtime inspiration? Then head over to Voices in the Wilderness at flickr and check out their bird photo mosiac. It will bring a song to your heart. And while you are there, check out another pool titled In Honor of the Goddess.

All good things,

Sia

Photo: First come, first serve by deerluvr. (Greetings, Canada!) Check out her photo site at flickr.