What it means to be a passerine

With a rare sighting of a bird in the news this week I thought I would do a bit a bird watching of my own. And a poem, just because.

If you live in the UK you may have seen or read on the news this week that a Scarlet Tanager, an extremely rare feathered visitor from the forests of North America was spotted in a garden in West Yorkshire, probably blown way off course by the recent hurricanes. Not for long did this small bird remain the only guest in a normally quiet village on the outskirts of Halifax, soon the area was awash with birdwatchers from all over the land, laden down with binoculars, telephoto lenses and no doubt flasks and packed lunches for the inevitable long wait for it to show itself in the treetops.

I love my garden birds, they bring me untold joy watching from the kitchen window but I am not a serious birder in that I do not own any specialist equipment, my weekends are not spent searching for a ‘lifer’ (the first spotting of a bird) and to be honest a lot of the birds I see are LBJ’s, little brown jobs that all look remarkably similar and I couldn’t really tell you with any certainty what they are.

I must admit at being quite surprised when I first saw the photo of the Scarlet Tanager, I was imagining something, well, scarlet, a fiery red bird lighting up the grey Yorkshire skies with it’s bright feathers but this youngster is still in his teenage plumage of yellowy/green with darker wings, more resembling our greenfinch rather than the exotic looking creature I was envisioning. Still, I can imagine for a birder, getting a glimpse of a bird that hasn’t been seen here for ten years must be a thrill beyond measure.

Young Scarlet Tanager

The birds I see every day in my own garden maybe slightly less exciting but they still are one of my greatest pleasures and this week, maybe because the weather has turned distinctly colder, I have been lucky to have a few new visitors, searching for something to eat.

Just this morning I have seen:

Blue tit
Coal tit
Great tit
Long tailed tit
Blackbird
Robin
Wren
Collared Dove
Wood Pigeon
Greenfinch
Goldfinch
Chaffinch
Jay
Magpie
Carrion Crow
Great Spotted Woodpecker

Most of these birds, as do over half of all birds, come under the umbrella of passerines. “Passerines” what a beautiful word. Passerines are generally perching birds that have anisodactyl feet, three toes pointing forward and one pointing backwards that enable them to perch. Doves and pigeons belong to a family called Columbiformes which are not passerines but they do have anisodactyl feet, which is a little confusing, and then there is the Great Spotted Woodpecker who is a near-passerine. I think I shall just stick to “birds”.

The Scarlet Tanager has only ever been spotted in the UK eight times before, the birdwatchers who travelled to see it in the flesh and managed to take a photo or a video or just see it with their own eyes must be feeling pretty special today, but the feeling I get when looking at the birds in my own garden is just as precious and I would say to anyone who thinks watching the birds on the bird feeder is a waste of time, to think again.

I wrote this poem yesterday, really as I wanted to use the word “passerine” in a poem!

Passerine

Time does not come with a receipt                           you cannot exchange unfair days, 
return misspent years         or swap a wretched decade for one that holds no regrets. 
We all have time but it would seem        never enough              and not the right sort,
it passes too slowly        or flies past too quickly     or we feel it doesn't belong to us.
Watching the blue tits on the feeder                        some would say is a waste of time
whole mornings lost in stillness         non-refundable moments         gone the second they begin with an upward motion of a wing.           I do not count the moving hands
I count the passerines,
       living bunting
                      dressed to remind us of spring,
                                       in hyacinth blue and primrose yellow 
                                                 tiny bodies lighter than the leaves
                                     oblivious to the joy they bring
                     into a world weighed down with fears,
            nothing here to make me weep
only the song of the blackbird.
Every minute so readily given 
        returns to my soul multiplied, 
                enriched with unbounded delight. 
                         If you wasted a minute of your time today
                                          it was not squandered on the birds.

Well, that’s me done for this week. Thank you so much for reading my little newsletter, I know it’s only a small thing in a big world but it means a lot to me and I am grateful to you for sharing your precious time.

Please ‘like’ by pressing the little heart and leave a comment, I’m still not sure how the algorithm works on Substack but us little people tend to get lost, pushed down to the bottom of the ocean under all the bigger fish so any help to get pulled up would be more than appreciated (if that’s possible).

Have a great weekend everyone. Let’s all wish that little Scarlet Tanager good fortune, may he stay safe this winter.

Lots of love,

Lindsey x