NO PASSPORT OR BORDER STOP REQUESTED

They were seen crossing the border and whizzed right through with no passport or border stop needed. It's been a tiring trip and our visitors are ready for food and friends in familiar territory. Here in the Okanagan Valley we love visitors and look forward to having them with us once again. They are hungry and we are ready for them with their favorite food served from fancy serving bowls that we keep on hand especially for them. We've had several sunny spring days and will be able to sit out on the deck and dine with them. It's easy to fix their meal, and here is the recipe. Four parts of water with one part of sugar, colourful and energizing as it tunes up tired bodies until nature brings on the spring flowers for real nourishing food, the organic nectar to build every body cell, keep their little hearts beating, and those wings hovering for the nectar drinks, the energy needed to redo their "half-walnut-sized" nest and lay those tiny eggs to raise their summer family. It's a busy time and night hours go to work as well. They are getting all tuned up polishing songs during sleep for their daytime wedding. We've been aware that dogs often dream but there is research now to prove that finches and other birds do as well.

The debate on whether animals dream seems to be shifting in favour of the romantics, thanks to this research strategy that involves precise monitoring of activity of specific brain cells and patterns of brain cell activity. Patterns of brain activity are recorded while an animal learns to perform certain tasks and then researchers look for that same pattern of activity during REM (dream) sleep. When this correlation occurs, and more studies are finding it so, the researchers conclude that the animal is dreaming "about" that activity.

In one study, for example, at the University of Chicago, researchers monitored the brains of young zebra finches while they were learning to imitate the song of the adult bird. The researchers observed the same pattern of brain activity during the young birds' REM sleep.

The researchers concluded that the young birds were rehearsing their song while they dreamed. This interpretation is similar to that given to the function of dreaming as observed in humans. One purpose served by dream sleep is to consolidate learning that occurred during the day. The researchers admit that although these studies show that animals have a brain event during sleep that functions similarly to that in humans, it doesn't prove that the animals experience this brain event in the same way as humans do.

It may require future scientists to use a new intuitive methodology to ascertain the experience of the animals. Perhaps these scientists will now discover this methodology in their dreams.