After putting E's breakfast down on her little table this morning, I decided to take a quiet moment to watch the birds outside the window. I had seen quite a few of them out of the corner of my eye, and so decided I wanted to watch for a short while, especially since E hadn't woken up yet.
A large European Starling was perched at the top of my suet feeder, and seemed to be dominating it (they are known as bullies after all), but my regular feeder was again dominated by House Sparrows (another mini bully), and there were 3 fat squirrels right underneath the feeder greedily eating in a circle (and given that they do fight with some of the birds, I guess they are bullies too). Still, as I watched I got to see a bright red Cardinal swoop in and out and some fat Robins off on the lawn pecking away. There were two or three Blue Jays flying around and hanging out on both the lawn and the bird feeder, some little Chickadees singing in the vicinity and nibbling away, and one little White Breasted Nuthatch and one little Tufted Titmouse nipping in and out very quickly with their respective bounties.
Upon walking back to the kitchen, I also saw a pair of House Finches on the dormant Burning Bush, surveying the little seed bell we have positioned right outside the window. I think they flew away when they caught sight of my presence though. Later I passed the front window again and saw the same Cardinal arguing with several of the Sparrows while they were all on the bird feeder. A Downy Woodpecker was now on the suet, and ignoring the chaos underneath.
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I don't know when my fascination with birds started, though it's admittedly not something that has been very consistent in my life. I don't remember paying attention to any birds besides pigeons when I lived in NYC, though perhaps that is because there were no other birds than pigeons in NYC. Maybe there were sparrows too, but I really don't recall many.
I grew up, like many kids from a former Colonial country, immersed in various aspects of British culture. The one most pertinent to the point I am trying to make is its literature. I remember devouring Enid Blyton books, and sometimes not really understanding the details of what I was reading, but enjoying the stories anyway. Tales of children going off on rural countryside adventures (all in very warm and urban Singapore!), and encountering wild animals and different types of birds. Plus having things like 'suet feeders', which confused me even as I got older because suet means a type of animal fat - so birds eat animal fat?! Or the feeders were to create animal fat?!
Then of course there was the general love of literature in English, most of which happens to be set in either the United States, Europe, or the UK. Plus general aspects of culture. And though I can't think of any one piece of media where there was explicit talk of birds, I had imbibed enough over the years that even before I put any serious thought to bird watching, I was already familiar with the names of many of the birds even though I had no idea how they looked like.
Well, flash forward to last year and Jon and I got our first bird feeder. Since then I have been trying to learn the names of feeder birds, with my last few being the Carolina Wren, the House Finch and Purple Finch. When it comes to female House Finches and Purple Finches though, I don't know how I'm ever going to learn to distinguish between them and all the many different types of Sparrows. I will just call every one a House Sparrow. It amazed me how many of them really look so similar, and yet there are people that can tell them apart. For now, that person will not be me.
