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Lethbridge, T C - ESP Beyond Time and Distance - The maternal insincts of the Manx sheerwater
Identifier
021671
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
ESP Beyond Time and Distance – T C Lethbridge
Manx sheerwater, a pelagic bird which only comes ashore to breed, was taken from its chick in a burrow on Skomer and released on the other side of the Atlantic. If I remember right, it took her four weeks, endlessly flying over the north Atlantic rollers to return to her baby.
This was not as cruel as it sounds. The chicks are fattened up by their mothers to such an extent that they have to starve for a bit before they leave their burrows.
The shearwater is an amazing bird. In the years gone by, when I sometimes used to stay on Skomer with a friend in the abandoned farm in the nesting season, their evening flight was quite astonishing. They came out of their burrows in hundreds and the air seemed to be filled with screaming ghosts, or valkyries. A whirr of wings filled the sky with a humming sound to which was added yells of demon laughter. Anyone uninformed of this performance, on being taken to a shearwater's breeding site, might easily be crazed with fear. The sky seemed to throb and then a ghastly shriek burst out close beside your head.
What calls the shearwater home to its chick and the dog-fox to the vixen? Two or three thousand miles of sea makes nonsense of any idea of ordinary electrical transmission on the tiny scale presumably available to a shearwater chick.
‘Telepathy, of course,' some will answer. Very good, but what is telepathy?