I do of course understand about coincidence and reading things into situations in trying times however always after a death of a loved one, be it animal or human I get a visitation. Obviously and thankfully I’m not surrounded by death so have not the experience to deal in certainties but the awareness over the years has grown with each death to now when things would appear to be unequivocal. Each visitation, for years, has always been by a bird. Not the same bird each time, always different and always totally out of context and always doing something particularly strange and out of character. Being a twitcher I have for years kept a record of all the birds I’ve seen. Dates places habitat etc. both casually and when looking so I know what birds are to be found where and how they usually behave. Sometimes I do see birds in the area I have never seen before. But these visitors, in most cases as well as being birds that are unknown in the immediate area also act very strangely. I have had herons dancing about on the top of pine trees, a wryneck in an area where they have never existed, a bee-eater of all things despite the cats, sitting on the window sill tapping on the window at me till I noticed it, a blue tit doing back flips and so on.
This time, having just lost a friend in rather tragic circumstances, as usual a couple of days after the event the bird appeared. This time it was a dipper. In 15 years I have lived on this mountain I never seen one before. Nor has anyone else. It arrived, landed a couple of yards away, jigged up and down, flapped it wings flew up and down vertically as if to say here I am, cocked its head as they all do seemingly to check whether I’ve seen them and flew off. This time I had a witness who said he’d never seen one either in over 20 years of looking and never one doing that.
I’m not really interested in finding an explanation as I know that they are simply messengers from the departed to say everything is ok. Why birds? Haven't a clue. I was though curious to know if this is something that only happens to me, just birds I mean, or if others have similar experiences on a regular basis.
Cheers
wzl

Maybe not in the same way, but I do get a nudge from the birds occasionally. They're not unusual birds, they're just doing unusual things. It's normally Blackbird, Wren & Robin, although Magpies have been known to stick their oar in occasionally.
Blackbirds sometimes line the path in pairs, one each side, flying a bit further ahead each time I pass. Wrens which are normally very secretive, bobbing along in front of me and stopping to look back to make sure I was following.
So don't worry, if we're going mad at least we're not alone

Birds as spiritual messengers is the stuff of eastern European folk legend:

http://www.mythinglinks.org/euro~east~panSlavic.html

I've had a couple of funny things happen with birds. When I was just starting out on my path, still unsure, every morning I would see a couple of ravens just down the road from where I lived. And the same again every evening on the way back - in the same place. This went on for quite some time. Not so odd, you may think, but we don't have ravens in our part of Essex.

I've had the raven thing before too.

Two ravens sitting on a fence on my way home from work for three days in a row. They'd let me get close, eyeball me and then fly across my path dropping a feather in front of me. I picked them up.

When I finally figured out what was going on, I didn't see them again.

Yep, same here. Once it was clear I never saw them again.

Magpies, always magpies, hence next tattoo being two magpies

I also have a red squirrel friend who follows me around local wood, just watching but following. He's nice, good listener

Big blackcrows - and also robins.

And once a thrush led me along a path. Which proved interesting!

I posted a thread a while back on the language of the birds - might be worth looking back at?

Hi Woozle, you asked why birds? Yet you answered this question yourself! 'Ive been a Twitcher for many years', your departed friends would know this and realise that you would notice birds 'out of context!'.
Ive had several interesting animal encounters, but as for birds:
Archibald the Bald Eagle gave me my first Eagle Feather, plucked it out of his wing and dropped it in his handlers hand, after Id just asked for any spare feathers and been told he had none, obviously I was given that one!
I also had a Hitchcocks 'Birds' encounter with Starlings, when i was looking for Buzzard feathers in a small wood. It was Dusk and all the Starlings who took up residence in the small wood had returned, I was leaving the wood and trod on a twig 'snap', the Starlings took the wing. I left the wood, expecting them to have all flown off in a large circle and come back a few minutes later. However, upon leaving the woods, I saw the ground was covered in Starlings, thousands of Starlings! Very Hitchcock like!
As I walked towards them they took off and landed in a wave like fashion, before flying off and returning to the wood! very Humbling!

Yes, that is what i feel. It's very reassuring.