For the past couple of months, we’ve had a sparrow who seems to enjoy sitting on a telephone wire observing the comings and going of humans to and from my apartment house. He perches himself at about the same spot every day, where he gets a bird’s eye view of people coming out of the door and down the porch steps. He doesn’t seem terribly fazed by human activity, like most birds. It almost seems that he enjoys watching us as he contentedly chirps away the hours of the day. I gather that he’s an older sparrow (they supposedly live about 10 years) who knows where the food is and doesn’t have to work too hard to get it. Perhaps his mate died not long ago, so he isn’t bothered this season with searching out bugs and worms for a brood of hungry hatchlings.

Well, I know that he’s just another house sparrow, and that house sparrows are considered to be pests, right up there with pigeons and starlings. Bird purists consider them the avian equivalent of cockroaches. They’re actually not even native American sparrows; they’re really weaver finches, that came over from England about 250 years ago. They’re an intelligent and aggressive species who know how to drive away any avian competitors in their size range. So, although they can’t mess with the many starlings and blue jays and mockingbirds and robins that we have around here, they unfortunately prevent us from seeing any nuthatches or purple finches or titmouses or bluebirds or any of the other interesting northeastern species (save for junco “snowbirds” during the winter).

But hey, I’m not going to throw the first stone at this little guy (see picture). If he didn’t have such a bird-brain, he might tell me that I’m a part of a human invasion from Europe that drove out a native culture, starting right around the time when his ancestors first saw these shores. Yea, true enough. So I’m not going to begrudge him his little window on the busy world of humankind. Let him enjoy his golden years observing us big critters as we come and go from our nest, with our various plumages, making our various noises (sometimes while holding little boxes up near our beaks), carrying many sorts of things with our claws. Interesting species, even if they are a bit too common. Yes, I guess that thought could work both for me and for my sparrow / weaver-finch friend.