Coco Calling No.275 - The Story of the Hapless Sparrow
Tra-la! Yes, your favourite parrot is back after a three-month break. I hope I find you all in very fine fettle and that you’ve missed me! If I were able to be with you now, it would be a case of head-tickles and mutual preening all round. Spring is upon us, winter has gone, and birds like me are starting to feel wonderful about life again. Yes, my spring hormones are kicking in, so that if anyone opens a cupboard door in the house, I immediately want to go inside and claim it as a nest site.
It's much the same outside in the garden where we have a large group of resident sparrows. Now, my human owner (who also doubles up as my typist), has put up a vast array of sparrow terrace nestboxes on the side of the house to cater for all of their accommodation needs. And he’s also hung a special woodpecker nestbox high up on a telegraph pole which is located in the back garden. Everything should have worked out perfectly, except that the woodpeckers enlarged the hole at the front of their nestbox, and then decided to drill out a couple of ‘side windows’ making it both unsafe and draughty. They then abandoned it and made their home somewhere else in the nearby woods.
Well, a young cock sparrow came around from the side of the house and took rather a liking to the damaged woodpecker box. So much so that he’s spent the last eight weeks sitting on top of it, chirping away to try to attract a female to his brand new pad. I suppose he thinks he’s secured ‘a mansion’ compared to his friends on the side of the house, but it’s unsafe and he just doesn’t see it. Several females have come along, and then after a hasty inspection, gone away again, realising that woodpeckers, magpies and crows could take their young from this particular box. And it’s rather a shame that this sparrow has wasted so much of his time, -all eight weeks of it.
And humans can be just the same. With so many different distractions in their world, they can waste many years pursuing the wrong kind of activities, often in the wrong kind of places. Yes, if they’d only realised it sooner, they could have gone on to make a real success of their lives and opportunities. All of us are guilty of it to some extent. A lifetime seems such a long time, until you start to get older, and then every day and every hour becomes that little bit more important. Because every moment that we have in this world provides an opportunity for us to better ourselves or to make the world around us a little bit better than it would otherwise have been. And I’m sure that the chirpy cock sparrow will come to realise that in the next few weeks.
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
(Charles Darwin: [1809-1882]: English naturalist, geologist and biologist who devised the theory of evolution)
“The world tells us to seek success, power and money; God tells us to seek humility, service and love.”
(Pope Francis: [1936-present]: current leader of the Roman Catholic church)
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” (Mother Teresa: [1910-1997]: Roman Catholic Saint and Nobel Laureate known for missionary work in India)
“Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”
(Ephesians 5:15-17)
Typist’s note:
Thank you to everyone that emailed us, asking for the blog to continue. It is because of the wonderful response that we received that we have decided to carry on. I have spent the last three months working on a new Christian book and am now around halfway through it. Hopefully, if I burn some midnight oil, the manuscript will be complete by the end of the year.
