Some days I see birds like buzzards and herons and I see them for their wildlife interest, as fellow creatures inhabiting the Earth . But sometimes they take on a greater significance. Birds and other creatures have also been seen as omens, spirit guides, otherworld messengers who speak to humans indirectly by their actions. Today a buzzard dipped as it flew across my path, then turned and flew back doing the same thing. I stopped and watched it as it perched on a tree looking back at me. What was its message? I didn't know, but I felt sure that I had to acknowledge the communication. Later, coming back along the same path, the buzzard again flew across, banking to one side in front of me before winging across a field to some nearby woodland.
I remember once hearing the phrase "there is another world but it is this one" and such experiences reinforce the sense of an Otherworld immanent in Nature all around us.
But how to hear the buzzard's message, go where the heron beckons, acknowledge the owl's call, find the gateway to the Otherworld from the winding path through the wood, or where the water trickles down a mossy bank? I don't know. But I do know that I have been there, unexpectedly, slipping through almost unconsciously with a sideways step off the path. But if you will it too strongly the path avoids the place and you come to the edge of the wood all too soon before the sideways step can be taken.
