“He’s there.”

Sure enough just as Carol told me, the sparrow that befriended us was looking in the dining room window. Between perching on the windowsill, he would flutter up, tapping the glass as if to say “let me in.”

Maybe he was seeing his reflection and being this time of year, maybe he imagined another male was intruding on his territory. The sparrows nest under our porch eves.

Our visitor would arrive with the morning sun and would do his window flutter and pecking for at least an hour. Then one morning a companion sparrow arrived. We guessed that would be the end of his visits. It wasn’t. She watched his antics, perched on the porch lattice, perhaps anxious to get along with raising a family. But he was interested in watching us, even though I suspect he was titillated by his own image.  You might say, he was full of himself.

There’s much to be learned from birds.

Meanwhile, the spring cycle has brought the snow birds home. The osprey, cormorants, the occasional loon, egrets and heron have returned. I have yet to see the terns although I’m sure they’ll arrive along with the juvenile schools of menhaden. And then the Bryant geese are still here. Isn’t it time to fly back to the Artic?

The swallows and mourning doves are back, too. The swallows build a nest, which is made from mud pellets, hair, grass and feathers, between the porch light and the roof. It’s a spot free of the wind and the rain and secure from predators. With fighter plane precision they zoom between porch columns to take turns tending their clutch. I haven’t figured out how this works, as there is more than a single pair going back and forth.  And dare you get too close to the nest, as they’ll take turns dive bombing you, coming within inches of hitting your head.

The mourning doves are more discrete. They nest on the porch beams and are statue still when we’re around. Once the chicks arrive, however, there’s a lot of commotion with both parents back and forth until the brood is ready to fly in which case the young birds are pushed out. All is quiet for a week or two and then the doves are back to raise another family.

As for our sparrow friend, he returned on Mother’s Day to check on us. We were having breakfast and he sat on the window sill looking in. It was nice company.