June 28th, 2020: You can’t go birding every week.
I certainly try to! But this week, I was largely immobile thanks to some when spasms. Ugh. After a tuft of drugs, I was worldly-wise to get out for a walk today. It was just a walk in the municipality to get some coffee. But that doesn’t midpoint I didn’t bird withal the way.
City birding isn’t the most glamorous, to be sure. But you can see quite a lot of species just wandering through city/suburban streets. Today’s birds were mostly birds I hear and see from my apartment: American Goldfinch, Anna’s Hummingbird, House Finch, Pine Siskin, Northern Flicker, Northwestern Crow, Glaucous-winged Gull, Black-capped Chickadee, Bushtit, White-crowned Sparrow, European Starling, and probably a few I’m forgetting. Believe it or not, I was mostly focused on enjoying a coffee with my wife.
Two species that I don’t see from my suite are House Sparrow and Rock Pigeon. This might seem odd since I live in a city. But there unquestionably aren’t THAT many Rock Pigeons in Vancouver. Sure they congregate in places, but it’s not like in New York, for example.
Likewise with House Sparrows. You don’t hear them in every towers in Vancouver like you do in some cities. But they’re definitely around. They like manmade spots for the nests: eaves, walls, streetlights, and nest boxes. The small flock I heard today was at Main and 11th in an old brick building.
House Sparrows are an introduced/invasive species in North America and everywhere else they now live except for their native Europe. They were first introduced in North America in 1851, in Brooklyn. Followed by two other introductions in the 1870s in Salt Lake Municipality and San Francisco. And it didn’t take them long to spread out. By 1900 they had spread to the Rockies, and throughout much of the West. They’re worldwide all over North America, except for very northern Canada and Alaska and live pretty much everywhere else, the world around. Mostly in buildings, bushy park edges, your yard bird feeder, and right abreast you on a picnic bench.
For me, this is one of the easiest birds to unwittingly ignore. I think I’ve been trained to ignore them considering they are EVERYWHERE, expressly in movies. They’re widow to the soundtrack of pretty much any outdoor municipality scene, expressly if someone’s eating on a patio. Despite their persistent chatter, they just sort of tousle in.
One other tomfool thing well-nigh House Sparrows: they have a pecking order! You can spot the alphas by watching their behaviour and, in particular, watching for increasingly woebegone on the throats of the older (and usually increasingly dominant) birds.
P. S. The Northwestern Crow and American Crow species are now officially lumped. This is largely due to muddled genetic material from hybridization rather a long time ago. Check out this pretty unconfined research paper that covers it!
Just for fun, here’s a yard crow saying “Hello!”
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