For thousands of years groups of humans have arrived in places they don’t belong, muscled their way past the native population, taken over the territory, then flooded the area with their own hordes of descendants. Humans who do this are called “settlers.” Occasionally they bring along birds who don’t belong, either. When the birds follow the lead of the humans, they are called “invasive species.”
The male house sparrow is a stocky, strikingly patterned bird with a black bib and a thick, formidable beak. His more somberly dressed mate is a member of the LBJs (little brown jobs), the large group of basic brown sparrows between which new birders despair of ever being able to differentiate. Brought over from England somewhere around 1850, house sparrows quickly spread across the United States, preferring areas of human habitation. Both male and female are surprisingly aggressive, especially when it comes to taking over other birds’ nests; they will actually kill the nestlings of gentle native species such as bluebirds and swallows—and sometimes the parents as well—earning them the enmity of birders everywhere.
“My anglophilia probably does not include English sparrows,” e-mailed my friend Ed, “but they, too, must individually appreciate some TLC.”
For someone who is as electronically inept as I am I’ve done surprisingly well by the Internet, which has supplied me with libraries of information and connected me with many wonderful and helpful people, including one who became a dear friend: Ed Stokes, a nature lover, birder, sailboat designer, and sled-dog enthusiast who, at one point, lived with eighteen Siberian huskies. Ed is also a writer and philosopher who can take any complicated situation and boil it down to one simple, elegant sentence, as he did with my house sparrow conundrum.
“Thanks, Ed,” I wrote back. “It’s not that I want to encourage the rotten little bluebird killers, it’s just that this one happens to be in my flight cage and has a bad wing.”
At that point it was easy for me to be cavalier. I had not had the experience of building, setting up, and monitoring a field of bluebird houses, hoping to help a species whose numbers are rapidly dwindling, only to check them one morning and find occupant after occupant slaughtered by house sparrows, whose numbers are rapidly increasing. At that point, however, I didn’t see a moral quandary; I saw only a single bird in need of care.
The following afternoon I entered the flight cage with a small towel and a cardboard pet carrier. The house finch hopped across several branches and flew to a high limb, while the goldfinch motored back and forth with surprising speed. I turned away from both of them and set my sights on the flightless sparrow, who was on the ground pecking at seeds. Tossing a dark towel over a bird normally causes it to crouch down in the sudden darkness, giving you time to bend over and pick it up. I tossed the towel over the sparrow, and a nanosecond later he sped out from under it and shot over to the other side of the cage.
I left the flight cage and walked over to John’s writing cabin, where he was working on his second book. Filled with file cabinets, bookshelves, old record albums, and various eclectic and eccentric memorabilia, the cabin looks like a miniature Adirondack house nestled between two hills of mountain laurel.
“I hate to disturb you,” I said, sticking my head in the door. “But could you help me for a minute? There is no way I can catch this bird by myself.”
Soon we were both in the flight cage, flinging towels and brandishing long-handled nets while the sparrow avoided us with the energy and velocity of a pinball. Finally we held the towels like matadors and, dragging them on the ground, herded him into a corner; faced with the inevitable he hurled himself into the air, came down headfirst in the dirt, and digging furiously, attempted to tunnel his way away from us.
“You have to hand it to them,” said John, shaking his head. “That’s why they’re taking over the world.”
Alan flashed me a grin, closed the door behind him, and looked down at his file.
“So!” he said. “You described our last patient as an ‘adult male house finch with a formerly dislocated left wing, still unable to fly.’ Today’s patient is…let’s see…how did you put it? Here it is: ‘injured bird.’ Hmm. A strangely vague description.”
“Vague but accurate,” I said helpfully.
“Care to elaborate?” he asked.
“Compound fracture,” I replied. “Originally brought to another rehabber. Wrapped for two weeks. I took the bandage off yesterday—wing is hard and swollen. Feels like a solid mass.”
“Okay,” he said, putting his hand inside the carrier. “And what sort of bird are we dealing with?”
It was the moment of truth. It was high-stakes poker. I looked him in the eye.
“A little one,” I said.
Alan withdrew his hand and regarded the bird.
“A house sparrow,” he declared. “And it just bit me.”
Alan and his wife, veterinarian Jan Robinson, are both avid birders. They win birdathons, during which teams of birders travel from site to site trying to identify the most species within a twenty-four-hour period. They bird by ear, sometimes needing only two notes to identify a small warbler otherwise invisible to mere mortals. They are active in their local bird club, of which Alan is a former president. They work to preserve habitat for native species.
They put up bluebird houses.
“The bone is infected,” said Alan, after giving the sparrow a thorough exam. “The only chance he has is if I amputate the wing. I don’t know how far it’s spread, so even if I take the wing off he could still die of the infection.
“It’s up to you,” he finished, giving me a level gaze. “I told you I’d help you and I will. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Every rehabilitator has his or her own way of dealing with life-or-death decisions. There are hard-liners on both sides: those who feel that it is always kinder to euthanize a wild bird than to take away its freedom, and those who feel that they must try to save every bird no matter how terrible its injury or how miserable its life in captivity will be. The majority fall somewhere in the middle, always trying to assess the situation and the individual, always trying to keep the emotions at bay and do what is best for the bird.
Finding a home for an unreleasable bird is not easy. A captive bird needs space, light, companionship of its own kind, and freedom from pain and fear. Some birds never adjust to captivity and live out their lives as prisoners who have committed no crime. Some birds’ injuries require constant attention, which can sometimes be in short supply at a busy wildlife center.
Removing the entire wing from a wild bird is now illegal, although it wasn’t when I was trying to decide what to do with the house sparrow. The reasons it is now illegal were valid back then, though: an amputation that close to the body doesn’t heal well, and the bird will always be off balance. The sparrow’s surgery would be difficult, his recovery painful, and should he survive, his long-term chances were questionable. Recovery would mean isolation, a distressing state for a flocking bird. And if he did recover, he would need a good permanent home with other house sparrows.
On the other hand, he was a feisty little bird and I would be saddened by his loss.
In this case, I was lucky. I didn’t have to spend hours agonizing over what to do, weighing alternatives, making a list of pros and cons only to discover that they came out even; it was obvious that putting a wild bird through such a grueling ordeal for a chancy outcome was unfair, that I would be doing it more for myself than for the bird.
I sighed. “Can you put him to sleep?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Alan, picking the sparrow up once again and cradling him gently. He paused. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
I drove home, my throat tight. Common, invasive, aggressive, he was still a miraculous creature once capable of flight, a tiny bird I knew only briefly but who left an impression so indelible that years later I can instantly call him to mind.
I remembered a long-ago county fair where I had listened to a wildlife rehabilitator talk about his work. “Wild birds hide their troubles,” the soft-spoken man had said. “By the time we get them, most of them are heading for the edge. What we do is simple: we bring them back, then we let them go.”
He had paused, waiting for the audience’s smiling reaction. How easy! How satisfying! Then he delivered the punch line. “The only problems are the exceptions,” he said. “And the exceptions will occur in nearly every case you get.”
Bring them back, then let them go. But there are different ways of letting go.
When I reached my driveway I stopped and waited for the school bus, debating what to tell the kids. How rosy a picture should you paint for a seven-and an eight-year-old? What circumstances warrant a lie? Maybe, I decided, I will just avoid the subject.
“How’s the sparrow?” they both asked as they piled into the car.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and told them the truth, carefully explaining the reasons behind my difficult decision. Mac looked crestfallen; Skye looked at me uncomprehendingly, her eyes welling with tears.
“But Mommy,” she said. “You’re supposed to help them, not kill them.”
It took me a moment to respond. “I know, honey,” I said finally. “But sometimes that’s the only way I can help them.”
We drove home in silence.