June 9, 2019 – Based on a special request, this is a tribute to my sparrow, the Hollywood Sparrow, Birdie. I’m not sure how much more I can say about Birdie, other than to say it’s so unbelievable amazing to take in a baby bird and have it live. Perhaps that’s a testament to how many pet birds I have taken care of, especially when they are sick. I think most people have a slight fear of birds. They are small, so holding them is scary. Plus they flutter around. When I have to hold my parrot to put her in a travel cage, and I do this by grabbing her in a towel, my family members leave the room. They don’t like the howling the parrot does. All birds get that way, a way that no matter how tame or how much they love you, they know their own vulnerability. There is an expression “flight or fight” for a reason. They are the epitome of “flight”. But when they come to trust us, I don’t think there’s anything as sweet. It’s a delicate balance we humans and our pet birds play, the human receiving the benefit of one of the most loyal animals out there, but always having to understand their most basic instinct of “flight”.
I don’t know how domesticated, meaning how pet-like, a sparrow can become. I’ve seen videos on YouTube where people did what I did – take in a baby and save it, only to have the baby take to them too much and become a pet. I don’t think Birdie is like that, but I don’t know. She is thinking about eating on her own now. She looks at the food on the cage floor. I’ve put it in a normal cage dish also, but so far she’s not interested in that new cage-dish. The thing is though, all of my birds take a few days to take to anything new in their cage. Presents are not something a bird likes. Eventually. Sometimes. But there is never a guarantee they will take to a new present in their cage. I get my parrot the same thing for a present. Always. She likes that present-toy, but still it takes about three days for her to like it when it’s new, and she knows what it is. Strange, right? But it makes me patient knowing Birdie will take a while to like the new food dish.
I did a fair amount of reading on sparrows, articles on how and what to feed them so they survive this fledgling phase. I think a lot of those articles were wrong. Certainly, they were wrong about the food. My sparrow seems only to like the parrot food; you should have seen her turn her beak at the thought of the moistened dog food the articles said she should have. I think my choice was good, my barometer being the fact that she’s still alive and growing.
I’ve read a lot about what the mother bird does when they don’t grow up fast enough, meaning take to learning to feed themselves. It’s a cruel shunning, and I’m fairly certain now that Birdie was probably a reject for being less than bright or quick in her learning about food. I talked to a person at a bird store who told me I was looking at a feeding time of five to ten days, then the bird would eat on her own. Needless to say, I’m feeling the frustration of Birdie’s mom because I’m still feeding her myself. It’s as if she knows that once she takes care of herself, she’s leaving this cushy life. Can they think that much? And would she want to be in the wild? And where should she go? That raised even more searches. What I found is alarming.
Even as recent as a few decades ago, sparrows were so common, they were the benchmark bird by which birds are compared. We all know what a sparrow looks like, so one would say a particular bird is about the same size as a sparrow, more colorful than a sparrow, and such things. Sparrows like to stay the same place. One article said the sparrows you see in your yard from one year to the next are the very same sparrows. Birdie likes to lay down on her perch and rest. It seems even in the wild, if there’s enough food, they will do the same, just sit in the same spot. Sparrows were found in abundance in all sorts of areas, rural areas, as well as in cities. But as cities have grown, they have become more problematic places for sparrows. There are much fewer places for the sparrows to nest. Sparrows like to nest in buildings, but there aren’t spaces in the steel and glass buildings. Worse, there is not enough food in the concrete sidewalks and landscaped gardens of an urban area. Without those things, a home and food, the sparrows are dying off, and dying off in great numbers. Article after article discuss the difficult life of sparrows. In Europe, the populations are declining so much, house sparrows of the type Birdie is are now an endangered species.
Which brings me to a really hard decision as to what to do with Birdie. I don’t know if she would remember her flock downtown, and frankly I think that’s too tough of a crowd for her, even if there is food, and I’m not certain there is. I don’t know if there are rural sparrows in California. I’ve never seen one. And I’ve never seen one at my house. And endangered, because there is not enough of a food supply, that thought scares me.
Birdie is developing though. She flies now. She is getting more and more reluctant about the things I do. But she is far from ready to live on her own. This little bird that was obviously rejected in a world that’s now so cruel to sparrows is at such a disadvantage. I suppose we’ll take this day by day. I do know Birdie likes to sit in the office with me. Right now she is happily pecking on her perch, that’s a new thing to do as of yesterday. And I just played a song I found today as a suggestion, and she chirped through the whole thing.
Birdie’s song
She really approved of this song, so this is the one point to make this story about music. The Hollywood Vampires new song Heroes from the album Rise set to be released on June 21st. The song has a nice guitar sound, and it’s a good mix between rock and mellow. And even better, it’s Hollywood Sparrow approved. And there you go, the one light thing about this article: the Hollywood Sparrow likes the Hollywood Vampires!