spring morning:
a sparrow tosses old twigs
while I clean house
As the temperatures have risen, it seems both man and beast are eager to set our houses in order. Earlier this week I began our spring cleaning and had hauled out a bag of garbage to the bin in the back alley when I noticed a small pile of twigs on the sidewalk near our garage. I looked up just in time to see a male house sparrow with a beak full of twigs fly off. I watched him for nearly half an hour as he demolished an old nest tucked under the eaves (I don’t remember seeing anyone using it last year) and used some of the materials to build a new nest in the neighbour’s back yard. I say “some of the materials” because he seemed quite particular about what was suitable for re-use: he’d pull one twig out of the old nest and let it drop to the ground, then he’d pull out a nearly identical looking twig (well, to me at least) and fly off to the new nest site. I’ve never seen a sparrow do this before and wonder if “recycling” is something they do frequently or if a lack of suitable nesting materials had forced this sparrow to re-use old materials. I waited until evening to sweep up his discards and add it to our trash bin.
