We started getting visits a few days ago from the bird pictured above. It showed up Friday morning. It’s a female cardinal.

She made herself known by flying over to the window and flitting around the glass, getting Debbie’s attention. She started flying back and forth from the lilac bush outside our kitchen to the window and back. Next she started landing on the window sill and raised her head above the edge of the window and peered inside. I leaned on the countertop by the window and peered back at her, no more than a foot and a half away.

Our kitchen and TV rooms are joined by a 4 foot divider wall. You can see all the way from one side of the house to the other. The DIY shows call this an open concept or something like that.

Debbie keeps her laptop on the counter on the other side of the kitchen from the window. When she stands over there using her computer, her back is to the window. After she did this for a while the bird flew over to the other side of the house and started flying around the TV room windows, where Debbie was facing.

That bird has been out there every day since. At times she is very persistent in her attention seeking activities. Then she’ll go away for awhile. She keeps coming back.

Sometime she has a male cardinal friend with her. He is more timid. He’s made a few flights from the lilac bush to the window, but makes a quick retreat as soon as he touches the glass. He’s never stood on the window sill and looked in.

Debbie posted about our new pet on Facebook. One of her friends said, “Is that a cardinal? They say Cardinal birds are angels from heaven watching over us!”

Is this bird a messenger from Heaven?

Richard was a fan of the University of Louisville sports teams. Their mascot is the Cardinals, so there is some symbolism here. Then again, our state bird is the cardinal. They’re not an unusual site. We’ve never had one perch on the window and look around before though.

Since Richard died we’ve seen some things in nature we’ve not seen before. I’ve wondered if God is telling us something through the nature he’s placed around us.

We’ve had other experiences with cardinals. The purple martins have shown up after Richard’s death.  There was the time a million birds went silent. A big grackle seemed to follow us around Texas on one of our visits to Sarah. It spoke to us every place we stopped .

Of course there’s that symbol of better things to come – the butterfly. We’ve had never before butterfly visits too.

So maybe God, or Richard, is trying to let us know something through these visits from his little creatures.

I’m still a fan of direct conversation and English… just sayin’.