Spring is almost here. How do I know? Not because of a superstition about a groundhog ... or the fact that the weather will finally warm up this week after a recording breaking number of cold days this winter.

It's about the blackbirds that build their nest in a tree in the park outside. They fly from rooftop to rooftop cawing to each other in what I suppose is a mating ritual. This morning they returned guided by Earth's magnetics, instinct, and love.

Cloud scrying or pareidolia ... The black shape in the middle of the pic looks a bit like a black bird to me.

Do you ever wonder 'what's beyond the sky?' Do the birds know?

Dakota Fanning starred in Steven Spielberg's 2002 Miniseries Taken playing Allie Keys a hybrid human-alien girl and the end result of the alien experiments on humans in the 20th century.

My ring has a central star and spinning crescent moons. My mother never spoke to me about the sky, as far as I recall, but on clear summer nights we'd walk down the street to the Coney Island Boardwalk and watch the sky - highlighted on Tuesday's nights with fireworks. Later, when I was 11 my mother brought me to the Nevada Desert where I was "Taken". ~ Ellie Crystal

Quotes from Taken

My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky. She liked to watch the clouds in the day, and the stars at night... especially the stars. We would play a game sometimes, a game called, what's beyond the sky. We would imagine darkness, or a blinding light, or something else that we didn't know how to name. But of course, that was just a game. There's nothing beyond the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on, and we'll play all of our games beneath it. ~ Allie Keys