White Crowned Sparrow

 "In order to see birds, it is necessary to become a part of the silence....." -Robert Lynd ( 1879-1949)

 All spring I've been watching this pair of  White Crowned Sparrows. For some reason, there is only this one pair left over from the winter.  First with one baby , that was caught by Smokey and killed. I buried its body under a shell. And then THIS one......alive and well.

 Fuzzy. Happy. Speckled all over, with rumpled feathers.

 Cordelia watching from the wings. Peep . Peep. Go the parent sparrows. Worried. Of course. CAT.

 Usually they're wintering birds, but here they hang around.

 They like forest edges, thickets, gardens, parks....woody suburbs like this.

 They don't like cats.

 I think cats like THEM. Those yummy  "Zonotrichia leucophrys"......they say.

 They eats seeds. Insects. More seeds. In seed pans.

 They eat in flocks in winter. Safety in numbers.

 During migration the sparrows can stay awake for up to three weeks. Around 67% of the white crowned sparrows breed in the Boreal Forest. That's a fancy way of saying Canada's Forests.

 That encompasses up to 55% of Canada's land mass from the Yukon to British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador in the east. It's a massive area in which the Sparrow can make its home.The oldest sparrow ever found, was 13 years old when it died. Hardy and adaptable.

 Peep. Peep.Peep. Peep. Peep. Go the parent sparrows. Urging their big fuzzy baby  to fly. And fly he does. He's quick. He mimicks.

 I've noticed that the parents are very careful with their baby. Watching. Teaching.

 They peep at him, in chorus. And he flies. They peep at him when he perches.

 I think they're very proud of him.

 When the first baby died, the peeping stopped. It was oddly silent in the garden. I wondered if the parents grieved. Do sparrows  feel their loss? I thought that they did. It was silent . I missed their sounds.

 But then this next baby survived. And the peeping started again.

 Male juvenile sparrows will sing  the song they learn from their parents . Sometimes singing in two dialects. That would make them bilingual.

 During migration a single white crowned sparrow was known to have flown 482 kilometres in ONE NIGHT.

 Even though the male does most of the singing, and the teaching of songs to the offspring, females will have their own soft song, distinctive to  just her alone. This baby is off and flying. No unhappy silence anymore.  Peep. Peep. Peep.

 "Love is the life of the soul. It is the harmony of the universe."
                                                   -William Ellery Channing