Sparrows

We don't see many sparrows in our garden.  They're mostly over the road, where the houses are closer together.  Maybe the woodland edge that is our garden feels hostile or in some way unsatisfactory to them. Well, most of the time we're content with our robins, tits, finches and nuthatches, but yesterday a couple of sparrows did wander in to our patch, and it was a pleasure to watch them.

As communal birds with an air of the 'chancer' about them, adaptable, companionable, argumentative, there's much in the life and behaviour of a sparrow that we can relate to as human beings.  We are always being told that the behaviour of wild creatures is governed for the most part by instinct, that they don't so much think things out and make decisions as respond in a programmed and predictable way to environmental stimuli.  I suppose this is true, even when we see birds (like the black-headed gulls I was watching not far from here the other day, wheeling and soaring above the lake and marshes) seeming to do things just for the sheer fun of it.  But the common house sparrow really does seem to me to be making it all up as he - or she - goes along.

I suppose in the end it's a question hard to answer - firstly, what capacity other creatures have to override instinct and think out for themselves how to behave in this or that situation;  and secondly, the other side of that coin, to what extent are decisions we think of as the result of thinking things through and exercising our human free will are in fact predominantly instinctive. All I can say is that the sparrows I was watching had a nerve and a swagger about them (in my estimation) that suggested birds unafraid of strange and different places, and looking to turn new every situation to their own advantage, and that reminded me a bit of us.