Birds – A Visit, a Figurine, and a Persistent Motif

I once thought the encounter was a gift. Now I understand it was an invitation.

11.21.25 – 2 am. Andy asks if I was talking to someone. He heard conversation and my voice. I was asleep. I don’t know.

Later that evening, as we watched a show on Netflix, I noticed Cassie was interacting with something in the next room, beyond my line of sight. Her eyes moved and her head tilted. Her attention was fixed on movement or a presence on the other side of the wall. I can’t see anything or even a shadow. The interaction continues for several minutes. Andy takes her outside shortly after that and all of the nearby neighborhood dogs are outside barking. Visitors.

11.22.2025 – Today, I see a headline and a memory surfaces. That is the prompt for this post. Possibly a sequence of posts. Return of the Bird Tribes. Dots connecting.

The Feathered Man

Years ago, I had an experience that remains difficult to categorize. I thought it might have been a vision, but it felt real. Not a dream. I was awake.

In the experience, a male figure stepped through a doorway onto a platform. We stood face-to-face, mere inches between us. His form was identical to a human in structure but covered in an intricate layer of iridescent, feathers. [would have been about 5 – 5.5 ft tall]

He remained still, watching me with a calm and seemingly amused expression, as though aware I was struggling to reconcile what I was seeing. There was no verbal communication. The interaction consisted solely of observation and presence.

I flat out stared at him, astonished that he could be covered in tiny feathers. They were multi-colored, iridescent, and beautiful.

In some way it felt like he knew me. After several seconds, long enough to allow me to imprint what I was seeing, he stepped back through the doorway and disappeared.

My memory of him remains one of the highlights of my life, because he is the most beautiful living being I have ever seen, and he seemed real. Feathers are not anything we are accustomed to seeing on a human. It would be impossible for him to show himself in public without causing some sort of scene.

The image in this reacreation appears more human – with the feathers blending more than I remember. But it does illustrate the basic human form.

I got the impression the encounter was intentional. He allowed me to see him and to remember that event. Was he also curious about me?

My memory surfaced in response to a current headline underscoring the presence of similar motifs in widely separated cultures across thousands of years.

November 2025 news headline. Archaeologists reported a 12,000-year-old fired-clay figurine from the Natufian culture in northern Israel, described as the earliest known depiction of a human-animal interaction. The figurine shows a crouching woman with a goose draped across her back and shoulders, interpreted as symbolic rather than utilitarian. Scholars suggest the piece may reflect a mythological or ritual association between humans and birds, not merely hunting or domestication.

In classical Greece, the myth of Leda and the Swan describes Zeus taking the form of a swan to interact with, and impregnate Leda, resulting in children born from eggs. Regardless of literal interpretation, the story encodes the idea that bird-forms were once associated with transformative or higher-order beings.

In modern spiritual literature, Ken Carey’s Return of the Bird Tribes describes ancient “sky nations” or winged intelligences that interact with humanity during periods of transition, framing humanity as the result of a union between earth-born beings and higher, airborne emissaries.

Across archaeology, mythology, and contemporary experiences, a consistent theme emerges: Bird-aligned beings appear at liminal points, origins, and transitions. Threshold moments and paradigm shifts.

My experience alone proves nothing but placed alongside: a prehistoric artifact linking women and bird-beings in physical form, a classical myth where a bird-form initiates a lineage of cultural consequence, and modern narratives suggesting contact with winged intelligences, the pattern is curious.

It raises questions relevant to current discussions around non-human intelligence. Have such encounters occurred throughout human history been interpreted differently depending on cultural vocabulary? Variations could include misunderstood, misrepresented, denied, and suppressed.

Do bird-forms represent a literal species, a symbolic translation, or an interface adapted for human perception? And most importantly: why do these motifs re-emerge during periods of societal shift?

As governments release documents on UAPs and scientific institutions begin acknowledging the possibility/probability of non-human intelligence, we may be approaching a point where ancient myth, prehistoric symbolism, and modern encounters converge into a single framework of interpretation.

A Working Hypothesis

I witnessed a being whose existence challenges current assumptions about biology, identity, and communication. If so, the encounter wasn’t meant to answer questions, it was meant to prepare the mind to ask different ones.

It left me open to accepting there is more to reality that what can be seen, and wondering, what else about our reality is beyond our ability to see? We are not alone.

Calling for a guardian spirit? When curiosity opens a doorway? Ask questions. Remain calm. They see you first.

Related

These books were mind opening for me.

Return of the Bird Tribes, Ken Carey. Ken Carey is the author of several books, including The Starseed Transmissions, Return of the Bird Tribes, and Flat Rock Journal.

[Bird Tribes] Reader Review: This is the kind of book you read in front of a roaring fire when you’re snowed in for days. It makes you feel warm inside and it takes you away into the spirit world that calls your name and tells you all this ain’t all that.

This is an older title but it’s message is timeless. If you’re looking to buy a book that can change your mind about the stress of the everyday, this is it.
We’re all spirits having a human experience. We are not Nations, we are not religious differences.

We are not racial bias, sexual discrimination or hate. We are teachers. Showing each other who we are on the inside, after journeying to that place, in that moment in this life, where we meet together and live what we’ve learned and what we have to teach.