indoor sparrows!
my winter renovation
errand forgotten
This past weekend I was working on my daughter’s bedroom reno (still) and had to run over to the local ‘Depot to pick up a new curtain rod. As I was walking through one of the aisles, I heard the distinctive chirping of House Sparrows. After I watched them for a while, I asked around and apparently, a small group of about eight birds has made their winter home inside the store. They pick up dropped seed in the feed aisle, and drink and bathe in the horticultural department fountain.
I know House Sparrows are an introduced species to North America, and I know they are considered invasive and destructive to some native species, like Bluebirds, but despite all that, there’s something about them I like. After all, if you think about it, House Sparrows embody many attributes we admire in ourselves: they’re industrious, hardy, adaptive and social. A now common bird across Canada and the United States, House Sparrows have experienced declining numbers in their native Europe for the past several years and in Great Britain it’s estimated that their numbers have dropped by almost half in the last 30 years. And if an animal as hardy as the House Sparrow is finding it hard to make a living somewhere, that can only mean things are really getting tough out there.
