I recently acquired two bird feeders and hung them where where I can watch the birds as I work at my desk.
Oddly enough, the birds have begun to exhibit personalities. And their antics are starting to resemble what I observe in people. What I always dismissed as generic sparrows are actually about a half a dozen different varieties now that I started looking them up to identify them. We've got two mockingbirds, two great-tailed grackles, a half-dozen mourning dives, and a bazillion little sparrows. I've identified several varieties: chipping, house, field, Brewer's, and a few others, and there's even more I haven't figured out. We have also had occasional cowbirds, catbirds, a house finch, and some little teeny gray guys I haven't figured out either.
One little gray sparrow has claimed the smaller feeder for his own. I call him Habib. Anything that approaches "his" feeder he fights. Big or small, they're not landing on his feeder unless they land on the exact opposite of the center seed supply. If he can't see them, he leaves them alone. And if he isn't getting enough fighting in, he goes over to the other feeder, gets in a couple fights, and flies back to "his" feeder and waits. Occasionally he'll eat, but his job, as he sees it, is to fight early and often.
Another sparrow, a field sparrow, I think, is called Marco, because he has the urge to explore. He sits on a ceiling fan blade, and every so often he'll fly very gently to the window and scrabble his little feet until he can grip the window frame, and then he tries to see inside. Another, called Kamikaze Joe, lurks under a bush in the back of the yard, and three or four times a day flies straight across the yard, bangs into the window, and flies back to the bush. The rest of the sparrows I've named after the Three
Stooges and the Seven Dwarfs, although I can't really tell them apart yet. They are a circus of bouncy, rollicking little birds who gleefully roll over each other finding and consuming seeds in the grass.
The mourning doves are a lot more belligerent than I would have thought for an animal called a dove. Unlike Habib, they only pick on each other, but they are persistent. They spend as much time flapping their wings at each other as they do eating. Most of the time they eat in the grass or the rocks, but occasionally they'll land ponderously on the large feeder and spend a while thrashing their bill around in one of the orifices, scattering seeds everywhere. Then they fly down again and eat.
And then there is Satan. Satan is a rather large great-tailed grackle that looks like he's been tarring roofs all day: hardly any feathers on his neck and breast and what feathers he has are all every-which-way. He doesn't fly much; just stalks in all scraggly and foreboding, and all the other birds scatter madly as if Freddie Kruger were lurching onto an elementary school playground at recess. I saw a mourning dove hunker down and refuse to panic, but Satan strode over and poked it with his bill, and the mourning dove moved immediately.
As I was watching yesterday, it occurred to me that although it is unlikely that they have the same kinds of thoughts as we have, they must be thinking little bird-type thoughts like, "Man! All my life I've had to scrounge for food, and suddenly I've got all I can eat right under my feet! Who is doing all this for me? And what did I do to bring it on?" And that attitude parallels a lot of the reactions I see in people over unexpected pleasures.
A wise man once advised, "Consider the lillies of the field. They neither toil nor spin, but Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these." Ordinary little sparrows can teach us a lot about the same attitude. Don't ask why; just give thanks and enjoy.
