Gitie's blog

Get Glory today and receive a  complimentary book of short stories - including an exclusive about us and our birds from wingedhearts.org!   

Want the motivation of a personal development book, the excitement of a supernatural thriller...AND a free gift from Hasmark Services?
The newest book from Devin O'Branagan, "Glory" takes those timeless self help principles we've all heard of and weaves them seamlessly into a thrilling tale of conspiracy, pandemic plagues and supernatural forces.
Now you don't have to choose between education and escape because "Glory" delivers both and takes the guilt out of a guilty pleasure.
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The Big Book of You - Out Now with Gifts

This book was so popular the first time around it sold out completely!   Renowned author, healer and speaker Jennifer McLean has taken her almost three decades of spiritual adventures and captured them in this lovely book… you won’t want to put it down.

Imagine being able to elegantly and lovingly manage whatever shows up in your life in a way that not only serves you but serves others (maybe even the planet).

The second edition offers a wonderful set of easy to read guiding principles, compelling philosophies, and sound bites of meaningful quotes that have guided thousands to view their lives in wonderful new ways. It has opened up doors for many to see, sense and experience their lives as “juicy adventures of thriving”, instead of “challenging lessons of surviving.”

You might recognize Jennifer's name from her popular teleseminars series Healing With the Masters featuring some of the biggest names in the Human Potential Movement, and from her remarkable advanced MasterWorks Healing Program.   

Click here to find out more    and to get the book at sale price with $1000 worth of bonus gifts.   read more »

Reader Claire Muskus sent us these gorgeous pictures of baby red-talied hawks.  The chicks look so cute: here is Claire's story:

 "We have a pair of red-tailed hawks that nest each year on our 5^th floor ledge.  Usually mid-March, the mom starts her annual ‘house cleaning’ then commences to ‘just sit’.  This year there were 3 eggs; all survived. Last year the same number  were in the nest, but only two survived.  Several years ago, one of the ‘youngins’ fell out of a tree that was near the bldg. Because its wings weren’t strong enough to make it fly back up to the nest, it wandered back and forth on the wall with its mother was dutifully watching and calling to it from across the street and often making low sweeps over it.  Some agricultural students from Trinity College were called in to try to capture it, which they were able to, somehow.  I had the good fortune of actually seeing the hawk ‘up close and personal’.  It certainly was a magnificent, yet scary example of power. I couldn’t believe the length of its talons – to gaze into its eyes was unnerving at best; it was if it could look through to your soul and beyond.  ‘Determination’ was the name of the game because somehow the bird escaped again, this time crossing the road and found its way into the bushes at the Bushnell; the DEP (Dept. of Environmental Protection) was contacted.  They found the bird, put a large towel over its head, brought it into the building, up the elevator (wished I’d been on that ride up – can you ever imagine getting on and seeing this ‘thing’ sitting on someone’s arm covered with a towel???) to the 5^th floor, opened a casement window and put it back on the ledge where it was supposed to be. "

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The 30 day blog challenge is over for those of us who live down under in Australia.  It's already 1 hour into the 1st July (yes I am so addicted to writing for you that I'm still up at 1.00 am.)

Thank you all so much for your interest and comments.  I really appreciate all of you who made the time to read my stories and give me your feedback.  I've had a wonderful experience sharing a little of what I have learned from these remarkable creatures with all of you.

We have so much more to learn and this can only be achieved if we share our stories and learn from examples.

I believe we all have an amazing bird story hidden in our memories. 

What is Your Bird Story?

It's time to tell all the rest of us. read more »

What should one do when one finds a baby bird and its parents seem nowhere around?

The answer depends on many factors and is not as simple as we would like it to be.  Much depends upon the age/stage of the chick, what type of chick it is and the state of the individual bird and whether it is really orphaned or just appears so.

Here are some quick tips: read more »

You may be a very kind and loving bird owner or you may not have birds at all.  But please help spread this message so that we can create a kinder world for these beautiful creatures. 

Pet birds are often confined to cages that are far too small for them to enjoy any reasonable quality of life. Canaries and budgies are sometimes kept in cages as small as a teapot.  Large birds like cockatoos and african greys are lucky to be kept in cages as big as the one in the picture on the left.  There is no room for the bird to even stretch their wings or get any exercise. The metal floor often a wire mesh is too harsh on their claws. The perches are also inappropriate as they are not suited to the size of their claws and the birds cannot flex their muscles.  Sitting in a cramped position for a life time of imprisonment, the birds get cranky and bite.  Then they are tagged as trouble makers and treated even worse. Large birds live for 60 -70 years in this form of confinement.  The wire mesh on the sides of the cage often damage their wings and beaks.

Yet there are some easy ways of improving their quality of life in significant ways. read more »

The first time a bird sees a camera, he/she may feel a bit unsure of the big thing we place next to our eyes that also makes a clicking sound.  But in no time at all, they realise that the sound poses no danger to them. Once they become comfortable with the sound, they feel quite amused by our fondness for pointing this object towards them.

We use a Cannon S5 with a 1.5 teleconverter lens which is a reasonable sized equipment. To the bird it looks like we have added a big round black giant sized eye to our eye.

The birds have no idea what the camera really does for us, but that doesn't stop them from appreciating many things about it, in their classic style of observing our actions. read more »

In order to understand birds, one has to pay attention with both ones ears and eyes.  In other words we need to hear  the sounds they are making while also following their actions. I call this 'Listening With Your Eyes'.

Birds love chattering and sharing the days news with each other.  Every bird species has its own language. The different species don't have much difficulty following each other.  The birds also have a range of soft almost inaudible 'mm', 'bb' type sounds and a lot of their communication is also non-verbal. read more »

Today I'm going to show you some examples of the way birds use 'show and tell' as a way of communicating with us (and also each other).

Consider the following two cases:

1.    A group of magpies flies overhead headed towards the north.  Our magpies sing out to them as they fly over. After a few chords they continue doing whatever activities had occupied them before. read more »

This is one of the first pictures I took of our birds back in 2001 with a film camera. (Any one remember those things that had to be handled carefully and in the dark?)

Here sitting on an old gum tree is Molly the mother magpie teaching juvis Maggie and Cindy to sing.  They had the most brilliant voices and loved singing at top volume.  This was during my early days of friendship with them. 

In today's post we will explore tips 4-7 of getting to know your wild birds. read more »