All In A Row

I have changed the photo at the very top of my blog page. Not for any good reason. But because I thought it was interesting to discover that I had not one, but two photos of seven birds lined up in a row. The previous photo [somewhere in this entry -- it keeps moving around] featured a line of seagulls standing on some rocks at the edge of a very blue Lake Michigan, early one summer afternoon. I shot that picture from the window of my friend's house up in Door County, Wisconsin -- a spit of land that sticks out into the lake like a thumb.

The replacement picture, way at the top of the page, is one I shot at sunset in Duck, North Carolina on the Outer Banks, looking westward toward the bay side, not the ocean side. The birds are probably mergansers.

The two pictures have nothing in common except for the serendipitous line up of seven birds, which I find muy intriguing, although I can't tell you why.

Do birds hang out in groups of seven for a reason? Is this just some cosmic coincidence? Or something more practical -- so they can have a nice balanced "V" when they fly -- one in the center and three on either side? Are seven birds all lined up a sign of the Apocalypse? Or an indication of possible OCD traits in feathered creatures?

Like any of us has a clue.