Common Birds 114 - House Sparrow

Thursday, February 20

I think today was my first actual father-son birding outing! For the first time, both of us knew what birds are and knew that we were going to a specific place to try to see them. We left the house early (he doesn’t have daycare on Thursdays and I’m working part time through the leave provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), because days are easier for everyone when our blonde bundle of excitement can get out of the house. After wrapping up at a coffee shop in Amesbury, we came to a crossroads. Keep going straight and we’d go to the library. Turn right and we’d enter a courtyard full of space to run around and the sounds of birds. I asked what he wanted to do. With a cry of tweet, tweet! he took off towards the courtyard!

We saw one chickadee and one blue jay flew past.

Other than that we saw house sparrows. Now, I know all of the reasons to not like house sparrows. I know that I’m supposed to ignore the irony and be mad that they're from Europe and not native to America. I know that they brutalize other species. But my son doesn’t know any of this. He knows that they are birds, that they say tweet, tweet, and that they are everywhere. For ten minutes we stood in front of a closed, fancy-pizza place, danced to the loud rock they were playing, and marveled at the dozens of house sparrows that flew and squabbled and perched on everything perch-able. Then we went to the library, read a book about a duckling, and played with about six Mr. Potato Heads.

My soul is full.