The sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in a much more vivid and emotional society than as mere victims of an indifferent nature that is economical at the expense of compassion.
To say they come to the feeding station sounds a bit grand for a small bird table, a few hanging fat balls and a scattering of seed and mealworms in a back yard in Oswestry. The first adventurers edge in, not just to explore the food source but to play in a space of subtle changes that have happened in their place. When the whole host, quarrel or ubiquity move in, there must be over 30 birds. The energy of their performance is contagious.
Moving through a home range of gardens, this clan know each other intimately. Feeding together, they have hair-trigger reactions. The slightest disturbance sends them all thrumming for cover at the speed of thought that looks telepathic – more fun than panic. Sparrow culture involves complex behaviours with other birds in this community of place: blue tits, robins, jackdaws, collared doves, blackbirds, wood pigeons and wrens.
To the streets outside, where at the winter solstice there is a procession of music and song in honour of the wren. What began as a reimagined ritual inspired by the folklore around hunting the Cutty Wren has changed into providing a sanctuary for the wren within the community. Such a ritual performance is not to live in the past tense, but to live as the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam suggested in the imperative of the future passive participle: “what ought to be”.
A ritual for the protection of wrens, like the ritual feeding of sparrows – incomprehensibly on the red list of British birds of conservation concern – seeks to perform what ought to be, not what was or might be. I hope you get this on Boxing Day, which, whatever it’s about, traditionally involves pageants of violence towards wildlife claiming to imitate nature’s economy over compassion. Ought it?
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
