Fledgling House Sparrow Cowers in Apple Tree

When we sat on the patio yesterday, G told me that there had been no sounds from the house sparrow bird house all day. In the midst of a heat wave, with a fish pond below, that could mean several things:

1. The hatchlings have died of heat stroke.
2. The hatchlings have dived into the pond to get cool, aka drowning.  
3. The hatchlings have fledged. Grown their flight feathers. Flown away. 

Within a few minutes, the ruckus from the apple tree made us hope that #3 was the answer. Two adults swooped noisily in and out of the tree, and another bird flew out. And then, above their raucous cheeps! we heard a softer peep. 

One young house sparrow clung to a cleft in the tree's upper branches, which rocked in the evening wind. As I watched the bird and listened to it cry, I had an old Shirelles soundtrack in my mind: 

Mamma said there'd be days like this, days like this, Mamma said.   

And then — we don't actually know when — the fledgling lifted into the air, and was gone. The nesters have flown. 

Fledgling house sparrow in apple tree © SB 

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