Hello, friends. Welcome to my April newsletter, For the Noticers. I’m so glad you’re here. Read on for some thoughts about what I’m noticing as spring continues to spring around here…
Spring has officially sprung here in East Boston: we’re past both the equinox and the eclipse, and the grass in Piers Park is carpeted with fallen pink cherry blossoms. I’m waking early these days, despite my love of sleeping in: my body seems to sense the morning light (and, yes, the honking carpool line around the corner) before my eyes even have a chance to open.
As I lie in bed, or even after I get up, I’m listening to the chorus of spring birdsong outside: delighting in its bright tones, but also trying to pick individual notes out of the cacophonous symphony. This is a new endeavor for me. Although I was thrilled to find an Audubon field guide for $6 at a used bookstore during the pandemic, I didn’t really take up birding right then, as so many others did. I read Christian Cooper’s excellent memoir (both evocative and compelling - the man can write), and I’ve long delighted in a glimpse of a scarlet cardinal or a cheeky robin redbreast.
But these days, I find my eye (and ear) increasingly drawn to a bird both small and ubiquitous here in Massachusetts: the house sparrow.
Vocal and bustling, these brown-capped birds visit my neighbor’s bird feeder; perch in trees in the nearby parks and hillsides; and flutter on the sidewalk, searching for scraps and seeds. I know they can often crowd out other birds, though from my point of view, the starlings and mourning doves are holding their own just fine. I’m not only learning to look at the sparrows, though: I’m learning to listen. With the help of the Merlin app and my own as-yet-untrained ears, I’m starting to differentiate their calls from the buzz of the grackle, the screech of the gull, or the liquid songs of the robin and cardinal.
Let’s look at it, one of my nephews used to say when he was little, bringing my parents or my sister a toy or a book or (yes) a tractor catalogue–whatever he wanted them to pay attention to in that moment. I think of his words sometimes when I pause, out in Piers Park or along the greenway or at my back door after a run, letting my eyes follow my ears to the song-filled trees nearby, trying to distinguish the notes of sparrows from mockingbirds, juncos, even (according to Merlin) an occasional northern flicker.
Some of the bigger, more distinctive birds are easier for me to spot: there’s no mistaking a bluejay for a grackle, or a herring gull for a hissing Canada goose. But the smaller ones–the expertly camouflaged ones that birders call “little brown jobs,” or LBJs–take a bit more time and patience. So I pause, and squint, and try to notice the details of their wings and markings: Let’s look at it.
The sparrows, of course, don’t know or care that I’m trying to pinpoint their voices. They’ve adapted to live among humans, but they’re not singing for us. Their conversations, effervescent and extensive, are solely with and for each other. It’s the same for the robin whose nest I spotted last week in a cornice of a building around the corner: they’ve adjusted to making their homes in cities, but that nest is for them, not for us.
These birds notice humans, to be sure, as potential dangers or possible food sources or even (perhaps) fellow creatures inhabiting the same space. That attention enables them to survive. But while the attention I pay them doesn’t determine their survival (or mine), I’d argue that it’s still necessary: a vital part of truly inhabiting my season and my neighborhood.
Sometimes, when I watch the sparrows flutter between trees, or perch on the telephone wires or swoop past my kitchen window, I think of that old hymn: His eye is on the sparrow. It’s a song about reassurance and faith, but it is also about attention: the idea of a loving deity that notices each of us, that pays attention to each human and tree, each bird and flower, in this big, wildly diverse, yet particular world.
I am no such deity, of course, and I can’t yet tell the difference immediately between a song sparrow, a house sparrow, or a tree sparrow. I have so much to learn, and I’m thankful to have resources like Merlin and my trusty Audubon field guide to help me.
But ultimately, as is so often the case, I’ll only learn to identify birds by paying attention. By looking up from my phone and detaching, just for a moment, from the endless mental round of emails and to-dos, future plans and existential worries. By noticing the patterns of a wing or a song, the length of a tail or the subtle variations in a call or a flight. By giving myself wholly to the moment, and thus coming to more fully inhabit my neighborhood, my world. By learning to recognize the sparrows as a distinct entity all their own, but also as part of the texture of this season: the constantly changing tapestry of this particular April, on this hill near the harbor where I continue to make my home.
New on the blog: thoughts on reclaiming Cambridge, tiny spring rituals, and relearning the steps of Holy Week.
Reading: Dawn Tripp’s luminous, heartbreaking novel, Jackie. Micha Boyett’s wise, truthful new book, Blessed Are the Rest of Us. Allie Millington’s winsome middle-grade novel, Olivetti (narrated by a typewriter!). And piles of mysteries, as always.
Listening/Watching: House sparrow songs, of course. My friend Roxani’s lovely interview on the Looking North podcast. The Last Repair Shop documentary on YouTube (so good!). And Nicole’s Wild Words podcast (it’s back!).
Loving: MAC Ruby Woo red lipstick. Cups of McNulty’s Cafe Blend - black tea with a hint of caramel. My leopard-print Rothys sneakers. Weekly trips to the library. Tomato soup from Flour Bakery. And those pink-and-blue spring sunsets.
I’m strictly a back yard birder, and it’s the robins, the finches, the chickadees, and the Little Brown Sparrows I love and know the most. There is one LBS in particular who sits in the feeder tray every night about 5:30, all fluffed up, and watches me on the couch as I drink my glass of Chardonnay and read my book. Sometimes her little eyes close in sleep. Sometimes mine do too.
I feel like she and I are kindred spirits, little brown house sparrows just going about their domestic lives.
I feel like I’m in very good company.
Katie, this is a lovely reflection on your avian neighbors. Thank you for sharing.
Naturally, I loved this - not least because I'm working on a project with attention at its heart right now. Thank you also for the Looking North inclusion <3 xoxo