As I have said before, time on my hands these days is giving me time to think and my thoughts this morning were on my recent hobby of photography. Glancing through my collection of bird snaps made me realise that although I had a good collection of Blue tits, Robins, Jay’s and all sorts the one not in my collection was the all too common Sparrow.
No problem this, just set up the camera with a 70/300 zoom lens throw a piece of bread onto the lawn and bingo. Or so I thought. After an hour all I had seen was next door’s mangy cat. What on earth is going on? In my younger days just the sound of a bread wrapper would bring Sparrows and Starlings by the dozen so it was obvious they had changed their tastes over the years…gone more upmarket so to speak. Went to my camera bag and took out my supply of wild bird seed that I use on my trips to the local park. I copiously spread some on the lawn and confidently awaited the deluge that was sure to follow. An hour later and no sign of a sparrow the only visitor turned out to be a sorry looking Robin and to my amazement it picked up a solitary piece of sunflower seed and left at great speed for the neighbours Laurel hedge. When I turned and glanced at the house roof it was obvious why, sitting on the edge of the guttering was a sparrow hawk. I dived for the camera tripod swivelled round to get a shot of said Sparrow hawk but alas I’m not as fast as that young boy who spent many any hour in the wild admiring the life form, and by the time I’d dragged my older less agile form to position it too had disappeared. After two hours no sparrows and it was starting to rain so time to go in doors and reflect on my failure.
Whilst sipping tea in the conservatory (another topic to follow) I mulled it over and put it down to the fact that I do not feed the birds in my garden due to the amount of Felines locally. Two hours, one robin and two predators were not good odds. However not being one to give up easily I decided to take my quest further and visit a couple of streets of terraced houses locally where surely the house sparrow would be in abundance as was the case when I was growing up. Yet the more I thought about it the more I doubted, simply because it dawned on me that it was actually a long time since I had seen a sparrow. Even on my trips to the local wildlife areas there was not a single snap of one and when I am out on my wildlife sojourns I tend to snap anything that moves.
Setting off down to the terraced houses with the trusty Canon set up ready to react I walked five blocks of terraced streets to no avail. I eventually decided it was best to make a retreat due to some strange looks coming my way. School holidays afoot the local Muffia seemed less than trusting of the dodgy looking old man prowling the neighbourhood with a camera. So alas up to now no sparrow pic and still more time to reflect on why?
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