I don’t know if this has been a problem for you, but for most of this spring I have been having trouble getting the “feel” of things. The weather has been very odd and I can’t seem to tell if we are stuck in a perpetual cycle of early April, or if we have catapulted directly to August. Throw in some bizarre smoke from unprecedented Canadian wildfires and you’ve got yourself a seasonal identity crisis.

On June 2 I was home from school due to an issue with my car. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed, but the parts had to be ordered and so I was forced to wait. So, being a work day, I decided to conform to my normal workday schedule. At the normal time that I would leave the house I borrowed my beautiful wife Susan’s car and popped out for some coffee grounds. Back home in moments, I made the morning’s brew and got dressed in my field clothes. Then, at about the time I would normally arrive at school, I instead arrived at the Thinking Chair for a morning with the birds.

It was a busy morning, but possibly a little on the quiet side. Singing around me were red-winged blackbirds, yellow warblers, blue-winged warblers, northern cardinals, house wrens, common yellowthroats, American robins, gray catbirds and the season’s first alder flycatchers. Tree swallows were flying in circles above the meadow, a red-bellied woodpecker was making deliberate flights up to my house and then back down the hill in a very deliberate and consistent flight path (clearly feeding nestlings) and plenty of other species made appearances. It was a typical spring day in a meadow.

What wasn’t typical was the temperature. This was to be the second consecutive day of temperatures in the 90s and that managed to throw me off just a bit. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the eastern phoebes that nested by my front door had somehow managed to fledge the previous weekend, which seemed stupendously early. However, the eastern bluebirds and the tree swallows had nests that were right in line with what you would normally expect.

After a wonderful session in the Thinking Chair, during which I managed to observe (see or hear) 37 species of birds, I finally got up and headed back to the house. I was just sort of moseying along when I came to an intersection of trails and although I really wanted to just go straight up to the house I forced myself to take the standard detour through the full trail network. I turned left and continued walking at a leisurely pace and it was only because I was fidgeting with my camera and looking downward that I happened to spot a small fledgling bird sitting in the vegetation right next to me.

This bird was so close that I could have simply reached down and picked it up, but I had no such intention. I wanted a photo, but this required that I take several steps backward so that I could get to the minimum focusing distance of 9 feet that is required by my telephoto lens. At such a close range the details of pinfeathers popped right out at me, but I must confess to being somewhat uncertain about who I had just run into.

Clearly 10 to 14 days in age, this little bird just didn’t make much sense to me. Habitat suggested a bird of brushy fields, but there were taller and thicker hedges of dogwoods and honeysuckles nearby that could indicate more of a “field edge” sort of species. It very clearly wasn’t a warbler (it was too large) and it certainly wasn’t an American robin, but knowing what it wasn’t didn’t really help me to figure out what it was. I did, however, have a hypothesis, so I decided to step back about 30 feet and just watch for a while. Surely, a parent would come by at some point, right?

The sun was intense, the temperature was rising and the little bird actually began panting in the heat.

Things remained quiet, so I guessed that the parent birds had not been present when I discovered the little bird. Some adult birds will go absolutely mental if you get close to their offspring and some will even start to harass you by diving at you and scolding you with great ferocity (as though a 5-ounce bird could do anything to a human of any size). I waited long enough that I actually started panting a little, but eventually an adult song sparrow that presented as being mildly concerned did appear nearby.

When I finally made it back up to the house I did some quick research and found photos that looked just like the little bird that I had discovered. The heavy beak with the yellow tissue at the corners of the mouth, the “Einstein” fluffs on the top of the head and the general coloration of the feathers as they were emerging from their sheaths all confirmed song sparrow. Satisfied with my identification and quite pleased that it conformed to my hypothesis, I set about the task of sorting my photos and settled on this photo to share with you.

All of this made be particularly happy because I have such a good relationship with the song sparrows that come to the feeder by my Thinking Chair. Song sparrows have become very comfortable with me and they are often the first to visit the feeding platform when I arrive at the Thinking Chair. It is quite possible that some of the birdseed that I provided had added to this fledgling’s vitality and I simply can’t wait to see if the little bird attends the feeder with its parents the next time I have some time to sit at the edge of my meadow.

Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 26 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts State Parks and he currently teaches high school biology and physics. For more in formation visit his website at www.speakingofnature.com, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.

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