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2001-05-18

Spaulding is my street in North Chicago. Koreans on one side and the Swedes on the other. Everyday now that the leaves are back, I watch the little birds swooping around from tree to tree and it makes me happy (as long as they are not bonking me on the head). I think most of them are common House Sparrows. What do I base that on? I recently bought Kenn Kaufman�s Birds of North America. It�s a compact but dense book. Easy to use and lots of pictures. It was an impulse buy. They had them stacked up by the cashier at the bookstore and I had been thinking for awhile I want to know what the names of things in the world are, besides "tree" "bird" "big tree". On my way home I was looking at it and a man across the train started talking to me about how great �birding� was. I was like, whoa there birdman; I just like the pretty pictures and was just curious about what the names of birds were. I am not a �Birder�. That�s for geeks my man.

And I put the book away. A little later I saw a bird flying by outside and had to resist the urge to break out the book to see what it was. Must fight urge to start carrying around little notepad...

Damn, the Eurasian Tree Sparrow is one cute fat bird.

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