DC Birding

A funny thing happened while I was walking the dog last week. I became an urban birder. After all, why be mediocre at only a few things when I can add another activity for which my enthusiasm will always out-distance my abilities?

It happened this way, on a Thursday: we spotted two small boys enthusiastically following a little bird that seemed trapped, unharmed but dazed, on the ground. I got that sinking feeling: something would have to be done, and likely as not whatever human intervention we provided would either do further or harm or no good at all (at best). And all in front of children.

But this story has a happy turn--no endings here.

The bird, a fully fledged sparrow of uncertain age, but definitely young, didn't seem lost or hurt, but was hanging out on the sidewalk near our house, very much in harm's way. I shooed the bird and it hopped only a foot away, then hung around tentatively on the edge of the sidewalk near the dog-beshitted and trash strewn median strip of our humble urban street. It wasn't even near the closest sapling, recently replanted thanks to the ongoing work of Casey Trees and its ReTree DC initiative.

Me, I know nothing about the lives of young sparrows. Though, actually, now that I have fostered one for a few days, I can confidently say that I know next to nothing.

(disclaimer: the web site on starling and sparrow care that I just linked to in my previous paragraph is a marvelous one. It's just that I am a flawed vessel).

I had luck on my side: this was an adolescent bird, not far from its nest even when I transplanted it to my safer garden (mode of transportation a Converse Red shoebox). He stayed in the box all night (we have rats...yeah, it's that kind of neighborhood) and in the morning I felt I could open the lid. By midmorning when I came home from the pet shop with mealworms he was out and about. Today I saw his parents feeding him.

He's decided to stay. He is particularly fond of my lavender bushes. So I managed to do an okay thing after all, maintaining my over-a-lifetime average of, well, being slightly abopve average at most things.

The important part of all this for you, gentle reader, is my discovery of the wonderful A DC Birding Blog and the many, many varieties of sparrow, finch, and other songbirds available to me in my own little 20th-acre of paradise.

And you thought all the preening in DC was on Capitol Hill.