'Context' - A Blog
The Brightness of Sparrows
26/02/2021
How a tiny, unassuming brown bird provides cheer and inspiration in the cold of late winter.
When there are no sheep to find cheer on the damp and cold days of the early year, where is one to find it? As I write this, the rain hammers cold and sideways at the walls and windows of the house. The wind continues its determined, winter task of seeking out every small gap in the building’s old doorframes (despite our best efforts to close them up) to ensure a slight draught coming in from somewhere or another.
Yet, as I write this, the presence of a defiant spirit is almost constantly audible to me. I only need to stop and listen. Seeping through the draughty eaves with the wind is the unceasing chip, cheep, cheep, chirp sound of the sparrows, appropriately named ‘house’ sparrows (Passer domesticus). It is not a musical sound; it is hardly the blackbird’s song which inspired Edward Thomas to write ‘Addlestrop’, or the voice of the song thrush in Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’.
The sparrow only seems to me to have about three notes and one steady, unchanging rhythm: on the beat every time. But for all this, they score for winter cheer over most of the other birds, for simply being noticeably there and busy, most of the morning, every morning, and a fair bit of the afternoon too, whatever the weather.
In fairness to them too, the last article about finding solace from sheep in February, was going to be about the sparrows when I started it, but they got overlooked, poor things. Yet my association with sparrows in the cold winter days precedes the days when I worked with sheep in earnest throughout the year.
I first really noticed their presence on the dairy farm, my first full time job some 25 years ago. At break and lunch in winter, when most of the work was around the yards, my three colleagues each retired to their own kitchens (they all lived on the farm) and I returned to my car to be out of the cold.
I say out of the cold, but my car at the time was a Series 3 Landrover and those with any experience of these great vehicles will know that insulating and draught proofing seems not to have entered the minds of the design team at any point. At various points, the others had invited me to come into their kitchens if I was cold, but it somehow seemed intrusive to their peace, so I figured I’d only do that if it really got too cold in the ‘car’.
Actually, I really liked sitting there with my own thoughts, and for company I had the sparrows. In winter, I always parked the vehicle on some hardstanding outside the dairy by a hedge. And every day there they were, with that same repetitive cheep, chirp, chip, that I can hear right now in the eaves here. It didn’t seem to matter how cold it got, and there were some cold spells that winter; I remember one whole week where the temperature was -6°C every night and struggled up to -3°C in the middle of the day, under a grey prolonged atmospheric inversion.
Despite this, those sparrows were busy in that hedge with their idle chatter. Goodness knows what they were chatting about, with their three tones and unvaried rhythm. One could anthropomorphise them to kids in the playground gossiping at lunch, or neighbours in a mild and unrelenting neighbourly dispute, but either way their constant presence was uplifting. As I buried myself deep into the warmth of an extra jumper (a super thick, super warm Aran knitted by my Gran) and drifted into 20 minutes reverie, the sparrows provided a similar insight into the simple privilege of being alive that the sheep would provide in later years.
Yet, as I write this, the presence of a defiant spirit is almost constantly audible to me. I only need to stop and listen. Seeping through the draughty eaves with the wind is the unceasing chip, cheep, cheep, chirp sound of the sparrows, appropriately named ‘house’ sparrows (Passer domesticus). It is not a musical sound; it is hardly the blackbird’s song which inspired Edward Thomas to write ‘Addlestrop’, or the voice of the song thrush in Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’.
The sparrow only seems to me to have about three notes and one steady, unchanging rhythm: on the beat every time. But for all this, they score for winter cheer over most of the other birds, for simply being noticeably there and busy, most of the morning, every morning, and a fair bit of the afternoon too, whatever the weather.
In fairness to them too, the last article about finding solace from sheep in February, was going to be about the sparrows when I started it, but they got overlooked, poor things. Yet my association with sparrows in the cold winter days precedes the days when I worked with sheep in earnest throughout the year.
I first really noticed their presence on the dairy farm, my first full time job some 25 years ago. At break and lunch in winter, when most of the work was around the yards, my three colleagues each retired to their own kitchens (they all lived on the farm) and I returned to my car to be out of the cold.
I say out of the cold, but my car at the time was a Series 3 Landrover and those with any experience of these great vehicles will know that insulating and draught proofing seems not to have entered the minds of the design team at any point. At various points, the others had invited me to come into their kitchens if I was cold, but it somehow seemed intrusive to their peace, so I figured I’d only do that if it really got too cold in the ‘car’.
Actually, I really liked sitting there with my own thoughts, and for company I had the sparrows. In winter, I always parked the vehicle on some hardstanding outside the dairy by a hedge. And every day there they were, with that same repetitive cheep, chirp, chip, that I can hear right now in the eaves here. It didn’t seem to matter how cold it got, and there were some cold spells that winter; I remember one whole week where the temperature was -6°C every night and struggled up to -3°C in the middle of the day, under a grey prolonged atmospheric inversion.
Despite this, those sparrows were busy in that hedge with their idle chatter. Goodness knows what they were chatting about, with their three tones and unvaried rhythm. One could anthropomorphise them to kids in the playground gossiping at lunch, or neighbours in a mild and unrelenting neighbourly dispute, but either way their constant presence was uplifting. As I buried myself deep into the warmth of an extra jumper (a super thick, super warm Aran knitted by my Gran) and drifted into 20 minutes reverie, the sparrows provided a similar insight into the simple privilege of being alive that the sheep would provide in later years.