First published in the Baptist Times 8 July 2011
I was watching a jackdaw on the bird feeder this morning and thinking about Solomon.
Novelists and biographers know the importance of finding just the right words to introduce a character. The reader's willingness to persevere depends on this crucial first description.
So I don't think it's random information that the author of I Kings flings in when stating - as evidence of Solomon's wisdom - that he knew about plants, animals, birds, reptiles and fish, from the humblest to the most impressive.
I'm guessing that Solomon's knowledge wasn't from encyclopaedias, Googled botanical websites or meetings with pond-life experts, since second-hand knowledge doesn't engender wisdom.
I imagine Solomon's childhood included hanging around hedgerows, slithering through streams and hiking up hills, observing the wildlife first-hand. If you spend enough time around plants, animals and birds, eternal truths will supplant received wisdom.
Take bird food.
We have birds in our garden but mostly the boring monochrome ones. We remembered our mothers chucking stale bread on the bird table every morning and being rewarded with nuthatches, bullfinches, goldfinches and countless bluetits. Our bread-chucking attracted gulls, crows, starlings and next door's cat.
So, we reasoned, times have moved on, hedgerows have thinned, pretty once-common birds are scarcer. Time to apply the wisdom of modern science.
We invested in a spike-based black metal contraption with octopus-arms. Each arm held a different shaped receptacle, with tiny perches for small birds.
Along with the designer feeder came recommendations for designer food, to suit the appetite of different species, but especially the cute and pretty ones. We settled on a fruit and seed mixture formulated for finches, and lard, fat, nuts and other irresistible titbits. We positioned the feeder in view of the window, festooned it with food, and waited. We hoped for goldfinches, woodpeckers, maybe an eagle or two.
And the birds came. They studied the feeder from every angle, and avoided it studiously. It did look a bit like a hawk.
Some got brave. Robins perched, peering down at the mystifying containers. Long-tailed tits hacked desperately at rain-sodden lumps of seeds glued to the clogged seed-dispenser. It seemed a challenge too far.
We decanted some of the finch-food on to the tray.
The finches, warblers, tits and sparrows stayed firmly in the bushes and perched on the washing-line pole, till we moved a fat-ball and nut-feeder to their preferred territory. We threw bread on the lawn for the blackbirds. They ate, happily.
The designer feeder was beginning to look deserted. Only the bigger birds were fascinated. They flew at it, beaks outstretched, wings flapping, but were kept at bay by the metal protuberances. But over the weeks, they grew inventive.
A starling braced one foot on the water bowl and the other on the lard-holder, doing the splits and pecking frantically. A jackdaw hung by one claw, wheeling its outer wing like a rotor-arm while its beak hammered away at the tiny seed-feeder aperture. A plump wood-pigeon sat in the water bowl and patiently devoured large quantities of finch-food, in miniscule instalments.
When all the specialist finch-food had been eaten by non-finch marauders, I put out some stale pastry. A jackdaw swiped a fragment, flew away, then returned and dropped it in and out of the water bowl, turning it over three times till it was softened to his liking.
The colourful finches stay unseen in the bushes these days. They sound happy, and their food (fat-balls and peanuts) disappears. The feeder designed to attract them has been colonised by starlings and crows, pigeons and jackdaws, with the occasional collared dove - but mainly the monochrome, ordinary garden starvelings.
But, watching their daily determination to use the metal conundrum to their advantage, they don't seem ordinary now. They are unsung marvels of creation, champion survivors in a world that favours and feeds the colourful and the cute, and rejects the unbeautiful hungry.
No wonder Solomon, impartial arbiter, grew wise 'knowing animals and birds.'
