I
was in a building that has a lovely courtyard in the middle of the grounds. In
the warm months, it’s all trees and flowers and cool grass. In the cold months
is full of brown, scraggly trees and wandering snow drifts. Either way, it’s a
lovely thing to have in the middle of the complex.
I
went for a little stroll, inside the building, just to stretch and take a short
break. I do this several times a day. Nothing extraordinary ever happens.
Well,
rarely.
I
wandered through a big, open room whose windows border the court yard. As I
came close to one of the windows, I noticed a little fluttering in a tree right
next to the glass. Ah! Some little birds. How nice. Common House Sparrows,
likely. They’re everywhere.
Then
a flash of red! My heart raced! What was that? What kind of bird is a startling
shade of red like that?
I
moved closer to the window. There he was on one of the branches – for a split
second. Unfortunately, birds are notorious for not being in the same place for
any longer than it takes you to realize they’re there. Before I could truly
focus, he’d fluttered hopped away. To make things more confusing, there were a
half-dozen or so other little sparrows in the same tree, each hopping to
another place every millisecond or so, trading places with one another and
making it very hard for someone with only two eyes to keep track of who was
who.
It
was only a moment before my little red bird was out of sight.
I
thought he might have moved further up the tree, so I leaned over to peek up
from under the partially drawn blind. Suddenly the whole flock took off in one
big flutter and swooped and swerved across the courtyard, disappearing into the
trees on the far side, somewhere.
Oh
when, oh when will I EVER learn not to get excited and move around too much
every time I see wildlife?
But
I’d seen enough. I knew it was a little reddish bird, roughly the size of a
sparrow. I did find it a little confusing, though, why one mystery breed would
settle in and become so chummy with an entire flock of a different species. How
odd!
New
time I was at a computer, I did some searching. First, I looked up the phrase “red
bird the size of a sparrow”. The computer suggested two species. I found maps
showing the breeding and wintering distribution of each one. The one isn’t
known to ever come around this way, and he was a bit too red, anyway. The one I
saw did have some bits of other colors.
But
guess what? The map for the second one showed that he does follow a path that
takes him a lot closer to my little courtyard window! I looked up some pictures
of him online and - -
That’s
it!! I found it!! I had seen a Purple Finch!
They’re
known, here, but they’re not an overly common sight. You don’t see them on
every second branch like the sparrows.
And
that brought me back to my last question. Why was my little finch hanging out
with a bunch of sparrows?
Then
it occurred to me. In my flurried online search, I’d flashed past a site that
mentioned that in many bird species, males are a much fancier than the females.
I knew that, and in my hurry I’d brushed right past it. Now I wondered…
I
got online and did one last search. I looked for pictures of the female Purple
Finch and – lo and behold! – she looks for all the world just like a regular
sparrow (to the untrained eye, anyway).
That was it! I’d seen a male Purple Finch hanging out with six girls!
Imagine!
An unusual bird sighting on a regular, everyday walk! Mother Nature is
everywhere. We just have to make the time to look.
Photo by: Cephas
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