sphaleotas

On the dying pattern of birds

A controversial new theory is outlined below.

Where do birds go to die?

This question is posed by the late Cork bishop Cornelius Lucey whose death wish it was that his theory on the natural deaths of birds be circulated publicly. However, it is only this week in The Corkman that this theory, and question, are revealed for the first time.

Bishop Lucey’s theory could be summed up as scientifically questioning whether birds really do fly over a rainbow – that is the formulation of a hypothesis on the dying patterns of birds.

Before his death and during his retirement years, Bishop Lucey was so eager to have his theory put before the world of science that he assigned the publication of his hypothesis to a nun as a ‘special commission’.

Sister Una Hayes, based at Regina Ceili Convent, Farranree, Cork wrote of receiving this commission from the bishop in the days before his death. Sister Una, in her old age, regretted not having completed her mission and subsequently assigned it to Monsignor Kevin O’Callaghan of Bandon.

The unpublished theory begins with a question – “Where do birds go to die?” The reasoning behind the scientific speculation is that while the world is populated with flocks of birds, rarely do we see flocks of bodies when they expire.

Bishop Lucey distinguished death from natural causes, and death by predator, or death through a car accident. Death through accidental or deliberate means resulted in the mangled bodies we have all seen. But the Bishop challenged anyone to produce evidence of a bird who had died from natural causes. Who could show the body of a bird which had not been killed either by a cat or car?

Bishop Lucey, who was famous for starting the very successful mission in Peru, among many other initiatives in Cork, was a man who had a passionate interest in bees. Beekeeping was a hobby that absorbed his attention. Bishop Lucey’s theory on the manner in which birds died, came from his in-depth knowledge of the life-patterns of bees.

Recounting her story, in writing, to Monsignor O’Callaghan, Sr Una said that the Bishop explained that when bees died, they rose up, into the “upper air”. And there they literally were destroyed through a natural disintegration process.

The bishop, according to Sr Una, concluded that as birds had an inner sensory device which told them when to migrate, so, like the bees, they had an inner sensory device which told them when it was time to die, or when their life-cycle was complete.

Sr Una quoted Bishop Lucey, who passed on his theory to her: “I believe it is in a bird’s nature to know when they are to die and they rise up like the bees do and disintegrate in the upper air.”

Shortly after receiving her ‘commission’, Sr Una herself fell sick and during her illness she began to realise: “I have been putting quite a few things on the long finger while the sand in life’s hour-glass seems to fall at a faster pace.” The thing Sr Una felt she had most put off was the publication of Bishop Lucey’s theory on birds, which until today was a mission uncompleted.

So like Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz, we might question if birds really do fly over the rainbow, up into the upper stratosphere, so high that perhaps pressure and altitude does destroy their tiny bodies.

Certainly, despite the fact of there being numerous flocks of feathered friends, people do not see feathered bodies littered on pavements. The question now being posed to the scientific world is if there is any basis to the Bishop Lucey theory and if he may be posthumously responsible for discovering an as yet un-discovered scientific principle. The question is if birds fly over that rainbow to die?

By Anne Ryan

[The Corkman, 2004-01-15.]

Posted by sphaleotas at January 17, 2004 12:13 PM