Monday, September 15, 2025

Even the Birds Are Chained to the Sky

We have a forsythia bush in our side yard, near our kitchen, that we planted long ago. It tends to get wildly overgrown in the summer months. My wife is planning to trim it short, back, and sides in the coming weeks. When I'm having my morning coffee during the spring and summer, I can watch sparrows who shelter in it.

I don't know where they nest, and I've never seen sparrow eggs. I have seen their chicks as the parents, probably the mother, I'm guessing, feed them, and I marvel at how insatiable they are. And so confident! They expect to be fed as if it were the most normal thing in nature, and they are. 

This time of year, the leaves on the forsythia turn brown and fall off, leaving more and more bare branches. I watched as a lone sparrow hopped from branch to branch, trying to bury itself in the remaining leaves to little avail.

There's a host of sparrows (I had to look that up) who live in the ivy growing up the outside of the chimney of the house on the other side of the deteriorating brick wall that separates my property from theirs. It, too, is losing its leaves so the birds will need more permanent protection from the elements as the fall gives way, inexorably, to winter.

I don't know if the sparrows 'know' winter is coming or just sense it, so I'm not clear if they can reason their way to realizing spring follows winter. To be honest, some days I'm not sure if I realize it. I know they don't migrate and brave the blasts and snow just like the rest of us. 

I wonder if they know who Bob Dylan is and that he sang of them long ago. Maybe that's why they stick around.
-bill kenny 

No comments:

A Murder of Crows

We are a culture that celebrates ourselves as unique individuals, except that, for the most part, we don't define ourselves by our human...