Sparrows signal the start of harvest
AUGUST 1 was Lammas day, ‘Loaf Mass Day’, or ‘Lughnasadh,’ the start of harvest: and there is a ‘Lammas flush’ of fresh, bronzy leaves on the oaks and in the grass (the richness makes the pony lame again) and appropriately, the combine starts up, a field away.
We hear its billion-bee buzz from the garden and the house sparrows immediately respond, instigating a ‘hedge gather’.
Part of their daily routine, it involves all sparrows to the garden hedge, outside my writing hut door.
Once they are all in (no sparrow is ever excluded) an excited, loud chatter begins, with all birds talking over each other.
I imagine they are considering harvest, too, and the gleaning of the fallen, golden, swollen grains to come.
Just as suddenly, there is a moment of absolute silence, and then a flurry as they whir off, their collective wings loud as the horse’s snort from the paddock.
The sparrows are so much part of house and home; and we love them.
We begin and end each day with them. And they are a characterful, family-minded community, if given to bickering and sometimes, violence.
It is important not to put our values on to theirs – we’d be on the phone to the police or social services regularly, otherwise.
A sparrow’s life is a domestic, close one and its daily routines predictable and extremely local.
They are so site faithful, whole colonies can just disappear if their habitat is removed.
Aside from the boxes we’ve put up for them, the house is covered in a thick trellis of jasmine and other climbers.
We wake with their bright, sunlit cheeping from under the eaves, and go to bed with their soft chitterings under the windowsill.
In between, we enjoy and puzzle at their bickerings, their parliaments and meetings; the arguments and pile-ons.
Sometimes, they’ll peer in through the windows, fly around a bedroom, or fall down the helter-skelter of the chimney and tap on the woodburner glass to be let out.
In August, they decamp daily to the cornfields, like hop-pickers.
We often have to rescue them. An almost fledged chick was cruelly pulled from its nest by a cock bird.
Our latest success was a feisty hen bird that went for an unplanned swim in a bucket brim full of rain water.
Our daughter noticed the gathering of loudly vocalising, hopping sparrows around the bucket and
went to investigate; scooping the sodden bird out, near-death.
But, put in a shoebox next to the towel rail to warm and dry, she revived enough to peck my daughter hard and fly off, squealing outrage.
Wild Diary
Want to know more? Amy-Jane Beer’s book on sparrows is available to buy, in the RSPB’s brilliant ‘Spotlight’ series.