Common Birds X - White-throated Sparrow
The rain is light, and the day is dim and cold. Rain doesn’t stop the blue jays from screaming. Nothing, apparently, does. The weather reminds me of standing in the miserable November rain for marching band in high school, despite being cosmologically spring (there is more day than night). Regardless, I’m glad to be outside, listening to the blue jays screaming, and trying not to step on all the earthworms. It’s amazing they survive the winter. On the pavement, their bodies are so pink and freeze-able. Maybe they’re just eggs over winter. Earthworms must lay eggs, but the thought has never before occurred to me.
A tufted titmouse stands on a thin branch in the trees that go down to the stream. An American robin hides behind some brush as I approach. The stream is still heronless. Two mallards drift towards me, coming around the bend where I mentally divide the stream and the pond. Chickadees and cardinals must mind the rain. I hear none of them, only jays and red-winged blackbirds.
On the trail past the pond, I spot two white-throated sparrows. Until I started watching birds, I had no idea there were more than one type of sparrow. In my conception of existence the only sparrows were house sparrows (also called English sparrows), and these sparrows were detestable. My seventh grade biology teacher was a birder. For whatever reason, I only learned the birds I was supposed to hate: European starling and English sparrows. Both species are invasive. Mr. King wanted us to know these species so we could shoot them. I never learned there were native American sparrows. Of course, most humans in America are also non-native and there have been a number of invasions. European humans brought their birds. The cities that have been reconstructed in America (New England even uses the same names), are populated almost exclusively by European birds: starling, house sparrows, and rock doves (aka pigeons). The birds are a living reminder of our history, an emblem of our propensity to conquer rather than make peace with time, space, biology, peoples, and place. Surely Mr. King knew that we could not exterminate sparrows or starlings, but I learned to hate them anyway. Death and destruction will not resurrect the past. But could we build an American city in such a way that it was filled with American birds?
While they are emblems, they’re also birds. Not only are there sparrows other than the English sparrow, there are quite a number of American sparrows, including the white-throated sparrow. They dash into a clump of leaves and give their whole bodies a shake. The shake tosses the leaves into the air like a tiny dust cloud around tiny tornadoes, and from the whirlwind the tiny sparrows spring onto whatever insects are uncovered. White-throated sparrows have white bands like eyebrows which sweep back over their heads like giant eyebrows. Above the eyes, the white eyebrows turn bristly and yellow. Their song is the inspiration for Katniss’s whistle from the Hunger Games movies. The first two notes are the same, going from low to high, and the sparrow whistles short-long-short on the same high pitch. As I walk, one runs off into the brush but the other perches in a tree overlooking the pond, which is still with sparse circles from the rain. Two Canada geese idle in the water. Watching the sparrow, I suddenly notice green - there are new leaves everywhere! They’re small, about the size of my pinky’s fingernail, and they’re the verdant, rich green that only exists in early spring - nature’s green which is gold. They cover the brush on either side of the trail. Brush I would have thoughtlessly thought was dead unfolds itself in anticipation of more and more daylight.
Then, there’s a sort of barking and I look up past the white-throated sparrow. Higher in the canopy, a blue jay is in a turf war with a (confusingly named) red-bellied woodpecker, which has a thick band of bright red feathers down the middle of a white head. The blue jay screams, trying to oust the woodpecker from its tree, but the woodpecker barks and flashes its beak at the jay, who retreats to a neighboring branch. For a moment the jay looks at the woodpecker, puzzling, then yields and flies off towards the footbridge. The woodpecker holds its territory. We’ve only just recently worked out why woodpeckers don’t get concussions. For a long time, humans thought woodpeckers had some shock absorbers in their skulls to protect their brains. Now we know they just have tiny brains. Force is mass times acceleration, so tiny brains mean tiny forces on the brain. Blue jays on the other hand are part of the brilliant family of birds called corvids (including crows and ravens) who can use tools, solve problems, and recognize and remember individual humans. Nevertheless, the woodpecker is here. I enjoy that this is both a Taoist parable about the virtue of simplicity, and a cynic's tale of the power of stupidity. The river is mostly still. Small waves ruffle the southern shore where I stand. The blue jay and red-bellied woodpecker show that the propensity for conquest rather than peace is not merely a human condition.
On the way back to my office, I see another white-throated sparrow. It’s on a giant pickup-truck, standing on the rubber lip at the bottom of the front window. Repeatedly, it flings itself at its own reflection in the side mirror. I’m not sure if I should try to help or not, or even what I could do to help.
