The pecking order




      The bungalow next door had solar panels fitted last summer and they've prove to be  an irresistible draw to the local house sparrow population, a sort of spare ow take-away.
      The sparrows line up on the roof and dive under the panels and we can only surmise that they are feeding and feasting on the spiders that must spin their webs and rear their young in the so-called safety of the panels.
      One aspect of this constant gathering is that that they prove the collective noun 'a quarrel of sparrows' wrong. The whole process is very orderly without a hint of scrapping and fighting. Strange.
      There's also a symmetry to the whole process, the spiders eat the insects, the sparrows eat the spiders and the sparrow hawks eat the sparrows. It maybe an unusual bird table but the pecking order remains constant.

Comments