If you were in Southern California when the earthquake shuddered up under Lander, you were in for a ride.
It scored a seven-something on the
Richter scale. A big number. Not big as numbers generally, but big for this scale. Houses caved in and people panicked; they must have known the quake was a seven.
Every city has sparrows. In fact, you have not made it as a city unless you have a dense population of little brown sparrows. It's the Law. In Santa Ana they were everywhere. When you went to the bridal boutiques on fourth street they skipped around under your feet: part of the landscape.
The apartment building where I lived had Spanish-style ceramic tile roofs. Orange and ridged. Heavy. Nowadays when they build those roofs they close the overhangs because the gaps left by the tiles' arches provide homes for a variety of critters, especially birds. My building had old roofs, so the overhangs were not closed. Each and every little opening was stuffed with vegetation: nests. The nests were lined up like apartments. There were more birds in the building than people.
After the quake hit, I was surprised my Mom and I didn't find more flightless young sparrows shaken out onto the ground.
We found only one that was alive and named it Lander. Lander for the quake; lander for the verb. He landed on us. It was a nice name.
We didn't know which nest he'd fallen from, so we kept him for awhile. We fed him seeds and held him and let him sleep in our hands. He was warm and soft, and smelled like a bird. He had a short bill that was well-suited for cracking small seeds. He seemed to like flies. He bit our fingers when he could get a clear shot. There was a lot of strength in his little bill. He was a tough bird.
When we sprayed water on him to clean him off, the moisture beaded on his feathers. At the time I did not know that his feathers were made of strands and hooks so small and tight that they stopped moisture. I knew only that he was waterproof. I thought feathers were made of plastic.
After about a week of feeding him, we took him outside to see if he would fly. What happened next is why we decided to breed birds when we moved to the valley years later.
Another sparrow flitted down and landed in front of our Lander. The two of them looked at one another for a moment and exchanged a few chirps. Pleasentries. After a moment the strange sparrow took off. Ships passing in the night.
The little stranger returned carrying a partially eaten water beetle and started feeding Lander. I don't know if this was one of his parents; it doesn't matter.
Passer Domesticus — House Sparrow
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Class Aves
Order Passeriformes
Family Passeridae
Genus Passer
House sparrows elbow with pigeons for ownership of Earth's cities.
I'm betting sparrow.
This stocky brown bird is one of the toughest creatures on the planet. 100 of them were introduced to Brooklyn, New York in 1851 and 1852. Fifty years later specimens were turning up in the Rockies fifteen hundred miles west. One hundred birds — barely enough to fill an aviary.
Today America has 150 million house sparrows.
The house sparrow is the most common songbird in the world. It's cheerful and lively: a good bird to be out singing.
You have seen house sparrows. If you are in a place with wires for internet access, you have seen them. They're the plain little brown birds of the city. The males have the black stripe under the bill and red-tinged soft feathers on the sides and back of the head. Subtract wings and tail and they're the size and shape of a golfball.
Originally, the birds hail from Britain, northern Scandinavia, and northern Siberia to northern Africa, Arabia, India, and Burma. Over the centuries they've been introduced to every continent except Antarctica. Can't take the cold, apparently.
Like I said, they're songbirds. But their song is like their appearance — bland. A monotonous cheep-cheep-cheep. They sing year-round but less frequently in August and on rainy days. Both sexes cheep; females are more vocal when without a mate.
While they're adaptable eaters, they prefer grains and seeds. They were able to propagate across the United States because they adapted to surviving off the livestock grain of people traveling west. They rely on people almost completely. Most house sparrow nests are built on man-made structures. House sparrows are not often found outside urban and agricultural areas. In agricultural samplings it was revealed that farmers' grain constituted some 60% of total nourishment.
Flight is swift, consisting of flapping bursts spaced with brief periods with the wings held at the sides. The resulting path is wide arches in the air.
House sparrows are social, living in loose-knit colonies. Upon settling in new territory, a colony will engage in communal singing for up to an hour. Territories very close to individual nests are guarded according to sex: males guard against males, females guard against females. Holes are preferred over nooks as nest sites, but house sparrows are gregarious. Nesting material consists of grass, straw, weeds, cotton, bits of debris, twigs, and feathers. Breeding is mostly monogamous, but a house sparrow will keep its nest after losing a mate.
Eggs are light blue or green and laid in bunches of three to seven. Both sexes incubate the eggs for ten to fourteen days. Young sparrows leave the natal colony soon after fledgling.
Pest Control
You read right. Pest control. Some people don't want house sparrows around.
Because house sparrows are such opportunists, people seeking to attract bluebirds and other more attractive species find themselves beset with little brown monotone-singers.
Don't want house sparrows messing up your avian landscape? There are a few things you can do — passively — to keep them away.
First, don't buy cheap birdseed. Most cheap birdseed has large quantities of generic filler grains, such as millet and wheat. House sparrows are not snobs; if it can be digested, they'll eat it. Bluebird aficionado Steve Eno recommends buying bird food from upscale sources that are less likely to use these filler grains. Seed does make a difference.
Likewise, any place that can hold a clump of vegetation is likely to turn into a nest site. Plug up holes and cracks in manmade structures. Don't leave bird houses sitting around. Even derelict farm equipment is sparrow real-estate.
People with a penchant for 'native' birds frequently trap and kill house sparrows. Our man Steve Eno recommends throwing them on the ground with enough force to result in humanely instantaneous death. Compressing the lungs is another option. Still another option is to stop fucking killing birds and get over your fucking little sensibilities. Nevermind. The man knows his birds and he's in my sources, so no worries.
Sources
Cornell Lab of Orinthology
www.birds.cornell.edu/programs/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/House_Sparrow.htm
www.birds.cornell.edu/BOW/HOUSPA/
WhatBird: The Ultimate Bird Guide
identify.whatbird.com/obj/84/_/House_Sparrow.aspx
Eno, Steve. "House Sparrows."
audobon-omaha.org/bbbox/ban/hsbyse.htm
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_sparrow