Sparrows

There are a lot of sparrows near where I live. This morning there were dozens of them in the street just outside of my place. I think they were drawn there by the black walnuts falling out of the tree out there. (One of them fell very close to me when I was outside yesterday. I don't think one has ever hit me on the head yet, but I'm not completely sure about that. Maybe you'd think I'd remember something like that for sure. I would tend to think so too, and yet here we are.)

A couple of crows were messing with the sparrows, swooping in from time to time to time where there was a crowd and chasing them away from the best food. I saw a couple of robins in the area too. There were not being aggressive like the crows.

Once there was a loud thud nearby, from construction or maybe a truck hitting a pothole, I don't know. But all of the sparrows zoomed away together in a cloud, and then in a short while they were back.

Besides the sparrows and robins, cardinals are at home just outside. The crows come and go, and occasionally seagulls and bluejays can be seen passing through. I've seen some others I haven't been able to identify yet, about the size of robins or maybe slightly bigger, grey and light brown, passing through.

I saw the movie The Big Year a few years ago, good movie, and it really fired me up about birding (they call it birding, not bird-watching), but I didn't actually follow through and become a birder (not a bird-watcher). But I've become very fond of the sparrows. Sparrows is what we mostly have here, bird-wise, and I've spent a lot of time watching them and listening to them, and I like them more and more.

Some people in the neighborhood have bird feeders in their yards. I haven't gotten to the point of feeding them yet. As it is, it occurred to me this morning that there are so many of them, some people might consider it an infestation. I don't know, maybe nobody thinks of it that way. But there are a lot of them. It's fine with me. My car definitely gets spattered, but to me it's a small price to pay. The sparrows are cute to look at -- so tiny! -- and their singing is pleasant.