Welcome to WingedHearts.org!

Welcome everyone to Maggie's web site!

To start my blog, I thought I'd fill you in on what we are trying to achieve and some of the rules Gitie and I have set for ourselves in putting together this site. Some years ago now, we met Maggie the Australian Magpie and mutually became friends, and he embraced us as part of his family. The full story is in the articles on the site. We have been blessed by this friendship, which has blossomed into relationships with hundreds of wild birds. We have learned things we simply never suspected in a million years, about their incredible intelligence, their loving natures, and indeed (I'll say it) their spiritual natures as creatures of God.

We wanted to share our good fortune in the hope that you, too, can make friends with whatever animals live near you, or, if you are deep in a city without any chance to meet any wild friends of your own, perhaps Maggie's stories will allow you to be Maggie's friend once-removed, so to speak.

One thing we set ourselves as a firm ground rule is that all the stories we put up are true. As you will see, Gitie has done an incredible job illustrating a lot of them with photos.  Now sometimes you can't take photos just as an event happens, especially when it is something unexpected and wonderful, so to tell the story we have sometimes had to piece together the illustrations from photos taken out of order. Other times, the photos really are a record of exactly what happened as it happened. But we have made up nothing. Every story realy happened.

I must stress that neither of us are naturalists. We are just two people who happened to be blessed with a friendship with a wild animal. We are involved in their lives, and we know perfectly well that our involvement has changed them just as it has changed us. But I don't agree with the idea that the only way you can learn something is by sitting back uninvolved and just observing passively. Another day I'll put down a few more of my thoughts about that.

As the site is brand new, not everything is fully working yet, but we want to make it so that you can share your stories about the wild animal friends that you have been privileged to meet, wherever you may be. In the meantime, please drop us a line!