What I learned from a song sparrow one summer

In the summer of 2020, when we were deep in Covid, I had to make a trip to the United States. When I got back home, I was put in quarantine for two weeks. Just me in the bunkie by the lake and meals in Tupperware.

The weather was lovely so I was able to work outside on the deck, under the shade of a white pine.
I learned about song sparrows that July. These unassuming brown birds, summer migrants here, spend their hours pecking in the undergrowth. But sometimes, they fly to a branch and sing.

Their song is easily recognized because it starts with three notes the same pitch. The rest can vary a little, but once you know the pattern, there’s no mistaking it.

I got to know my song sparrow because it lived close to the bunkie. It felt at times like it was just me and the bird there, living our lives.

I started to pick out this individual’s song and how it was different from the other sparrow that lived up the hill.

Then one day I noticed something else: it had its own voice with its own timbre. A kind of raspy tone.
I knew it like I know the voice of my mother the moment she calls.

Stuck

I was visiting friends and family in England the other week – two trips across the Atlantic in a triple seven. That’s a lot of fossil fuel.

When I go to the landfill in Haliburton, the biggest bag is full of plastics. I throw them in the dumpster and hope they’ll be recycled.

These things bother me but I keep doing them.

It’s not that I don’t care – of course I do. But I’m kind of stuck. I care but then I go and do things that contradict the caring.

Doing things differently is overwhelming so I carry on. The caring continues so I just learn to tune it out.

Still

Covid changed me. When I was stuck at home, the rushing disappeared. I became still and noticed things I’d been living alongside but never noticed before.

A family of raccoons that ran up a maple when I startled them. The loon that slid by the end of the dock.
The moment I heard the voice of the song sparrow – not just the pretty tune but its actual voice – something changed.

I already knew birds and insects are important and that healthy shorelines keep our lakes healthy.
But I didn’t decide to care about the shoreline the sparrow lived on because I had the data – I just started caring.

And while it didn’t fix my dilemma with the fossil fuel and the plastics, it was somewhere I could put care into action.

Love

An ecological garden is a system full of individuals. Plants that grow, bloom, set seed and die. Caterpillars that become butterflies. Birds that gather twigs for their nests, sit on their eggs, feed bugs to their young, then see their fledglings grow up and fly away.

All these creatures arrive because there’s something to attract them. Then they stay because there’s something to stay for.

These are the things we notice.

A traditional lawn, on the other hand, looks the same every time. So you just stop looking and move on.
All a rich ecological landscape needs is for us to be still enough to notice.

Most of the time that summer, the song sparrow was foraging amid the honeysuckle. I noticed it would make a tutting sound every few seconds, keeping in touch with its mate.