Dear friends,

House sparrows visit the balcony of our apartment to bathe and drink.
They own this neighbourhood, it seems, and build their own little
apartments in light fixtures and the rotted top of a light pole by the
street. This morning, we did a thorough cleaning, including the covers
on our down pillows, which when removed revealed the down escaping, from
all the plumping I do no doubt. Rather than have feathers all over the
apartment, we cleaned up the pillows out on the balcony and let the
feathers fly. I don't know what the neighbours think of that, but the
sparrows loved it. They grabbed those feathers by the beakful, dived
from the rail, returned for more. The males seemed to load up, as though
showing off, while the females were more particular, picking up one and
dropping it to select another. Anyway, they had the area all tidied up
in about 10 minutes. And I had a lot of fun watching these earnest
little birds. My list is not long, nor sophisticated, and there are few
rare sightings on it, but I do love watching the birds, even the common
ones, going about the important business of their day.

Mike MacKenzie
mike at charters.bc.ca
http://www.charters.bc.ca
Victoria, BC Canada