With my busy schedule, it’s hard to find time to do the things that keep me sane. One of the most important things is having time to write. Sometimes I have to get up at 4:00 a.m. to make it a part of the day.

I love mornings and I love writing, but I hate getting out of bed. Lately I’ve had a little friend helping me, a song sparrow I call Freddie. He starts singing shortly after my alarm clock gets mauled into silence.
 
Freddie likes to sit on the duck house that sits right next to my vegetable garden. That’s how he and I became acquainted in the first place. I was sitting barefoot in the sun-warmed dirt a few weeks ago, fussing around my tomato plants. He was making the rounds, broadcasting from all the best perches in his range. How could I ignore this gorgeous little man-bird, singing?

He throws his head back, open mouth to the sky, puffs out his stripey little chest and sings with such gusto you think he might burst. In the middle of one song in particular (he has several variations on each of about five different themes), his little throat pumps like a piston with each note. Sweet Sweet suh-suh-suh-suh swinger…he sings, and then one of the neighbor birds might sing to answer. If he starts a song buck buck buckee, but hears another bird, he stops short and listens. Then he might sing: “I’m singing on top of the duck house”, or “I’m singing in a rose bush in the field.”

Freddie sings from one end of my day right through to the other. Lying in bed the other night, my eyes were scrunched shut against the lingering summer sunshine, but my ears couldn’t shut out Freddie. I began to realize that I could identify the base song, and when he switched to a different one. (It’s not as easy as it might sound. He may sing the same base, but with added notes, a chopped ending, or variations in the middle. They seem classifiable by their beginnings. I’ve transcribed the Do-Wah series, the Do-Wee series, the Buck-Buckee series, the Sweet-Sue and the Sweet-Sweet series.) 

First, he would sing one song 20 or so times, then switch to another for about the same amount of time, then another. Sometimes he would sing each only a few times before switching, as if unsatisfied with the results. At one point though, he stayed on one in particular, which I transcribed Do-Wah Do-Wah sh’bop sh’bop Ringo-o-o-o-o. He sang it almost identically over and over and over again. I wondered if he were having a bit of a border dispute with a neighbor, vocally duking it out. 

It amazes me that simply paying a little attention to one small brown bird can open my ears to so much more in the world. When I first realized I was hearing his songs as something with meaning, without trying to transcribe them or understand them, it was like I’d been touched with a magic wand. Suddenly I felt like scientist and shaman all rolled into one: I had listened and taken notes and watched and listened some more, and I could tell when something was up out there. Fred could actually startle me by singing something out of the ordinary.

More than that though, Fred has given me Song Sparrow Awareness. Weeding a garden 20 miles from here, I hear a song sparrow on his perch and without thinking I note when he switches songs or continues with the same one for an extraordinary length of time, and when he moves from perch to perch in his territory.

I’m going to miss Freddie when he leaves for winter. I wonder if he’ll be back next year. Will I recognize him? Yesterday and today he has been behaving very differently. He has sung only infrequently, and not once in two days have I seen him on the duck house. Early this morning, picking hornworms from my tomato plants, I saw him on the split-rail fence. There were two or three other song sparrows within a few feet of him. I’m guessing this means Fred’s young’uns have fledged. With them gone, he has far less motivation to risk his tail-feathers singing at the top of his lungs on the most visible perch around. I guess I’m going to have to get myself out of bed.

By Kate Goodin, UNH Cooperative Extension NH Outside volunteer                               

08/16/06

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.