RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 38

RANDOM REMINDER

HAIL TO THEE, BLITHE SPIRIT

There is a sparrow in Upper Riccarton which resolutely refuses to face the facts. Every morning, as soon as the garage doors are open, it stops collecting crumbs and so forth, and flies up on to a fence beside the building. There it sings most mightily—or it did, late last month—before flying into the garage. Inside, the songs trilled out, and when he was done with the sparrows' top ten, back to the fence again, for another burst of song. It was obvious, even to those who do not study nature closely, that the entire performance was designed to entice a hen sparrow into the garage to talk over settling down together. But he had no takers.

Any wise hen must know immediately that a garage, often closed tight, was no place to bring up a family. Little more in fact than living on the smell of an oily rag. Perhaps the sparrow had not heard of the Spanish proverb, that there are no birds in last year’s nest; it followed the French one, that every bird likes its own nest best. At all events, this sparrow would not be persuaded that before long, some hep little hen would not come along and make a home for him. But he probably felt something was wrong the time he tried to fly out of the garage by the closed back

window, thereby suffering concussion. When he recovered from concussion, he showed no improvement in other respect. Every morning, the strange little love dance on the fence, with the wings up and the feet performing a sort of feathered Charleston. And the same songs, sung vivave. And the same result. Everyone else has settled down, in pairs, and he is left there, trying to entice a mate into a dark and gloomy garage. It might be, ultimately, some comfort for him to know what Montaigne said, some time ago. He likened marriages to cages—the birds outside despair of getting in, and those inside despair of getting out.