About twenty or more years ago, I was walking over to the local supermarket, when I came across a baby sparrow huddled up against a low wall. The flats that the wall belonged to are forty-plus feet high, so though the little mite had survived the fall, there was no possible way its mother could get it back into the nest and a local cat was bound to stumble across it sooner or later.
Anyway, touched by its plight, I hurried back upstairs, found a small basket with a lid and returned to the chick. As I tried to pick it up, it squawked and shrieked and spread its wings trying to look bigger and more imposing, which was an impressive display for such a youngster given it wasn’t even two inches big and probably weighed an ounce dripping wet.
So I scooped the tiny sparrow up, with it loudly protesting the entire time, put it in my basket, took it back to my flat and fashioned a home for it. First I cut one side out of a cardboard box and covered it with cling film, then cut a flap in the back to act as a door. Finally, I put a number of cotton wool balls into the small basket, turning it into a surrogate nest, all nice and cosy.
At first, the baby sparrow was rightfully wary of me, but when you’re as hungry as growing birds are and someone keeps bringing you food, it’s not long before trust is gained and given. I fed it oats soaked in milk, small bits of bacon fat (remembering how we used to put the rind out for the birds), crushed up nuts and slivers of dried fruit, all supplied by a pair of tweezers. The diet was pretty much guesswork on my part, but it gobbled down what I provided and seemed to thrive.
After just three or four days, I started leaving the box open and all I had to do was walk into the room, tap the food bowl I was carrying and “Birdy” - as I had so imaginatively called my little friend - would fly across the room, land on the rim of the bowl and open its tiny beak demanding to be fed.
Every evening, when my girlfriend of the time, Allison, came home from work, first thing she would unfailingly do was ask how Birdy was and go and check on her. That’s when an amusing idea came to me in the form of one of those sugar coated mini eggs. Sorting through the bag, I found the most convincingly egg-looking one and just before my other half got home, I placed it on the cotton wool in Birdy’s nest.
I was sitting in the living room when Allison got back that night and as usual she asked how Birdy was and went straight into the bedroom to check. A few seconds passed and then she cried in a voice full of surprise and delight “Tony! Tony!”
“Yes,” I responded, trying to sound innocent, but my voice clearly giving away my barely suppressed laughter. There was a brief pause and she called back, “Nothing…”
When she came from the bedroom, I was grinning from ear to ear. “You bastard,” she said. “I really thought for a moment Birdy had laid an egg.”
“Yes,” I laughed. “She’s only a baby and an egg that size would have split her in half, but you still fell for it.” She replied that she would get me back and sometime later, she did, in the form of a large plastic spider placed half behind a pipe in the bathroom. Being a terrible arachnophobe, I was almost sick from fright, so she did indeed get me back. Good and proper.
It was a shame that my suppressed laughter gave me away, because the next part of my plan - expecting to be called in to take a look at the "egg" - was to amble in, pick it up, pop it into my mouth and crunch it up. I think the look on Allison's face would have been priceless. Just the same, all these years on, my prank still makes me smile when I think about it.
Birdy grew fast and within another week, when she started flying around the room, I realised it was time for her to leave the nest. She was clearly ready and cooped up in my bedroom, I was scared she’d bang into a wall and hurt herself.
Next morning, a nice bright warm day, I took Birdy in her box/cage out onto my balcony. She had only been with me a matter of days, but having been a mum to her and having won her trust, I was sad having to let her go, but knew it was the right thing to do. I opened the front of the box and Birdy hopped out onto the wall. She hopped about a bit, looking out towards the big world she was about to enter, then she turned back around, took a good long look at me like she was saying goodbye, then turned again, spread her wings and flew off like a tiny rocket.
I freely admit to shedding a few tears watching her go, but I was also pleased that I'd managed to give Birdy her life back when the little soul I'd found, feisty or not, likely wouldn't have lasted an hour or two out on the street. They say that God looks out for even the smallest fallen sparrow and on this occasion, I guess I was the one sent to do the rescuing.
For many years since then, sparrows had all but disappeared from London. No one seems to know quite why, but they went from a daily part of life, to non-existent. Recently, however, I have started seeing a few about again. I particularly noticed because they have been conspicuous by their absence for so long.
There are actually a breeding pair of sparrows nesting somewhere in the downstairs communal garden. Whenever I see them hopping around foraging, I can’t help but wonder, or even hope, that one or other is a direct descendant from Birdy and that perhaps I had some hand in continuing Birdy's line and in my own small way helped to stop sparrows from vanishing for all time.
Still, a comparatively huge chocolate egg, Allison, really?
