We’re in Southeastern Florida. It’s not a vacation. C’mon, the season’s late summer. In other words, hot, humid, really hot, and likely to have a hurricane. But this isn’t about weather. Our visit is a family gathering. But this isn’t about that either. This is—what would you expect, considering where you’re reading this—about a bird.
A Southeastern bird. A bird of the semi-tropics we call Florida, and the flat-out tropics we call anyplace near there where a bird can fly. And we see a bird. Okay, for the moment, all else is out the window, off the table, no longer worth wasting words over. What we want to focus on is this bird seen in hot humid Florida.
But before we get to the I.D. here’s a fun fact: the bird is not on the wing, not in a tree, not in water, not in a palmetto or shrub, not on the ground, no, the bird is joining us for breakfast. It is in a restaurant. An indoor restaurant. Sitting on a chair at a nearby table.
Folks are having breakfast. (Eggs make an ironic appearance, but they’re ignored by this bird). The thing you’d probably want to know, considering you’re someone who reads this bird stuff, is: what kind of Southeastern bird was it?
Maybe you’re hoping it was a Painted Bunting. The jackpot of Southeastern bird sightings, but you think: get real. That wildly colored bird is only going to be spotted in the wild. So what was it?
Could it be a Hudsonian Godwit? They do show up along the Atlantic coast during fall migration. But not the case. We just like saying that name. Hudsonian Godwit. (And it is actually on our life list).
Hudsonian Godwit. Not.
Could it be Miami’s own national bird, the state bird of Florida…the Mockingbird? Sitting in a restaurant mocking us. But no.
How about an American Coot. Well, the restaurant did have some coots, but of the human variety. Yeah, and it wasn’t a gull, Or a Booby—Blue-footed or any other kind, even though South Beach is near.
It wasn’t a Merlin, a Pied-billed Grebe or Peewee. Not a Boat-tailed Grackle, Scrub Jay, swallow or oriole, nor any one of the myriad warblers that flock up our field guides and life lists. No. So what was this interesting restaurant-going wild Southeastern bird?
Answer. Common house sparrow. The kind we see up north, and everywhere else. Year ‘round. A bird that is nothing to write home about. One of the most common birds in America, and probably the whole world. That little brown and gray house sparrow. So what’s the big deal?
It was sitting on a chair.
In a restaurant.
And it was a bird.
Where there’s chow on the table, the floor, and elsewhere, birds will come for a free meal.